[Dar Es Salaam - Phuket] Day 6 -- Fresh Meat and Broken Engine

With a lot of high tech on the boat, GPS, autopilot, depth sounder, sonar, radar, VHF, hydraulic steering and such orderary power consumers such as a refrigerator we were using much more energy than the two solar panels installed could provide. We actually had two more panels. Too bad they were not installed, but rather blocking the double bed in the front cabin. So, even when sailing with sufficient speed, we had to run the engine for an hour or two every day to recharge our batteries and ensure our power supply.

We did so also on the morning of day six. Not for long though, as we soon heard a strange clicking sound from the engine compartment and immediately stopped it when we realized the v-belt was coming apart. Jackpot! Now for all the non-mechanics out there, the v-belt is one important engine part that ensures cooling of the engine and also the power generation. No v-belt and your engine is not worth much more than dead weight. And there's nothing but a spare v-belt to replace a broken one. If you want to get anywhere, that is.

With tons of equipment, sane and insane stuff, we expected to have engine spares on board. Charles had told us the whole cabin in the foreship was packed with spares. As we started turning everything upside down and inside out there was not a trace of any spares besides one lonesome alternator and some hydraulic hose. One or two hours and lots of sweating later we had searched all the foreship and had had no success. We knew the rest of the ship quite well already and we started getting the idea we'd have no spares on board. Double Jackpot!

We didn't give up so fast. Systematically, we went through the whole ship from front to end, taking every storage space apart, even though with most we were certain to know all the containments. I think of it as extreme luck that after emptying the last closet underneath the cockpit my brother went into the dark closet to probe around in the least accessible and darkest corners of that closet with his hands. In a cable compartment, between an unordered mess of cables he managed to pull a v-belt out. There was nothing but cables running through that corner and our spare v-belt blended into them. I gave it a try myself using my longer arm and pulled out another, shorter v-belt. One of them had to fit and fortunately, one did indeed.

An hour later the engine was running again with the spare belt I'd installed while frequently cursing the rusted and crappy tools I had to work with. We had also checked oil and gotten another surprise. Even though the last check was only two days ago and the engine had run probably only two or three hours, the oil was gone. The engine looked dry and there was no trace of oil in the whole engine room. We assumed the incline of the boat to be responsible, but even filling up a little and pulling the boat straight didn't really help it. It took three liters of oil to reach a normal level again. Scary. Bad bad engine.

The only thing the engine couldn't really be blamed for was that it wouldn't start from time to time. That was actually due to the voltage drops we still experienced. Fortunately, there was no problem to shortwire the engine. It's the quick down and dirty solution to a rather nasty problem. After tracking cables through the ship and taking things apart I had still not found the cause for the bad electrical system. Suspecting so many things, I was still tapping in the dark and not getting anywhere. By now, with so many things to be fixed, installed and configured I had taken the position of the ship's engineer. Call me Scotty, Jim. I'm still trying to live up to the standards. -- "I will need three days to fix this, Captain Kirk." "I give you three hours, Scotty." "Okay captain, consider it done!" -- I didn't even get to the problem within three days.

Besides being the engineer I had also taken the position of the fisherman. With a snapped line the night before and again in the morning I proposed to reel the fish in sports fishing style. From that comment on the task was mine. Late afternoon I got my chance to prove I was capable of living up to it. I reeled in a decent sized makreel of about 65cm and shortly after a calamar, both just in time for dinner. The fish was big enough, the four of us couldn't even eat all of it in one meal. I had gained just another rank on board.

Our sailing was very good now. We had gotten to know the ship, its behaviour as well as its limits and could now make good use of what we had at hand. We managed the sails well and were getting our routine while making some good speed. With the wind changing to come a bit more from behind we were not as cranked anymore. While giving relief from life in an angle I had to now get used to not holding everything at an extreme incline anymore. We had our first day to top the hundred mile mark and that was worth enough to open a bottle of red wine for the crew. Still we worried, how long the trip would actually take as we were still not going as fast as we had anticipated. We had an important appointment at Bangkok airport in mid-november with another brother of ours and we didn't want to miss that.

captains log:
0300 make over 7kn, loose fish
0800 off SS
engine 09-0935 break V-belt
after 3 hours search we finally find spare v-belt in the most impossible place
1100 upSS
1200 S3°32 E 46°10 -- 110nm
1415 up fock SSE 3-4
lost 3l of enigne oil, alarm off!!
fill up 3l of egine oil
barracuda ~65cm
calamar 20cm
overtaken 1/2 nm no stb
2320 slight E 4kn