Day 11 Position Report 07:28.045N 080:01.269W
Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Sat 7 Jun 2008 17:08
the engines were drinking oil like a thirsty date. then as we were heading
back all seemingly well we were getting water in the port engine bay so we
shut that down and discovered that the whole of the port side of the
boat was full of water, and at the time didn't seem to be getting any lower
even with all the bilge pumps going so we juror rigged a couple of extra
pumps and used the hand pumps to get the water out of the boat. After that
we went on with the investigation of where the water was come in from.
We knew that the water was warm and salty so that narrowed the search to
about 4500nms of ocean! Once the port engine was stopped there wasn't
anymore water coming in, Tony jumped into the engine bay to sus things out,
the general consensus was that it was sea water intake port related, Tony
found that one of the rubber pipes after the pump had split, hence filling
the Port hull very quickly with warm sea water. Tony managed to cut the
pipe down and reuse it and with the water out of the hull we carried on
under both motors.
I came on watch at 2000hrs and all was good only a couple of 200 nms to make
it back to Panama and Flaminco Marina.
So at about 2300hrs a Pod of Dolphins came to play around the bows of the
boat, friendly type these mammals, so I went out to the port bow to say hi.
As always I started to whistle to catch their attention, well these were
cheeky buggers and one of them decided to slap his tail on the surface of
the water after he had jumped!!! which started to soak me in sea water,
after that I kept my distance!! next time I'll be ready with a water
blaster!!
And there's more..........
Am day 10, as if things couldn't get any worse, the bloody port engine
decided that it wasn't happy with it's lot in life and fried a couple of
piston rings....I really do think that someone on board the boat must have
done something nasty in a previous life...
Well just when you think you have seen and done it all, well straight in
front of us too big to get around up pops a hugh set of storm clouds!!! Tony
and I looked at them T ' they don't look too good' M 'nope' T 'what do you
recon?' M 'can't go around them, anyhow they are not moving too quick,
probably just going to get pissed on!' T 'sounds good' ...........ten
minutes later........T & M 'didn't expect that much wind' T & M 'nope'
So we had 50 knots + for 3/4 hour, both soaked and not going very fast
anywhere...Doh!
After that things have calmed down and we are making slow progress to
Panama, possibly getting in early am on the 8th June local time, I'm pretty
sure there is nothing else that can go wrong but it is not beyond the realms
of probability!
I'll do the next update after we arrive in Panama.
Mark