Engine; 4th round !!!

If you are tired to hear about our engine problems, you can go straigt to next article…

Moreover, I won’t go over all the previous hapennings (refer here below!)

Wednesday Nov 8^th – 8.41am. After passing Darwin Marina’s lock (they all have locks due to 8m tides!) and filling the tanks, we set sails for our next destination : Kupang, capital of the Nusa Tengarra Timur province on the Timor Island (not the part where they fight, don’t worry!)

It is a beatiful day, Tequila is shinning clean, full of stores and water, with a fully reviewed engine : the pump that was repaired in Noumea has been replaced by a brand new one, the mounts have been changed, service has been done, we bought extra cans for extra storage of Diesel and water, etc etc…

The Bureau Of Meterology of OZ has given us a good forecast : light winds in the beginning, going 10-15 knots in the right direction after couple of days…we expect to be 5-7days at sea…

Light winds at the beginning….never mind our engine runs like clock work…

Light winds on the second day…no problem, our motor is still looking good and performing well…

On the fourth and fifth day…NO wind at all!!!!…As one problem never comes alone (especially at sea…a french sailor has discovered a new mathematic rule : at sea the problems first add up, then they multiply…)…the brand new pump breaks in two. We put back the old one…which is still performing good and away we go again…only to find out a few hours later that the diesel tanks are empty!

We are left about 1/3 of the way thru the passage with 2 20l cans and some 20l from the return reservoir (I will save you the technical explanation that Romain put in the french version…for those who know what the return reservoir is or can imagine, fine. For the others…let’s just say that we managed to gather 60l of fuel…)

60l gives us 90 to 100NM and we have 150NM to go before getting to the closest of the Timor Shores.

Given that we are in cyclone season, the Captain wants to keep the fuel for an emergency exit, should a tropical storm or some dangerous typhon come towards us…

So there we go, waiting for the wind in the middle of the sea…we are fine for food and water, our only worry about being stranded is that we gave an ETA of 15^th november to our parents (and wife for the 4^th crew, Gregoire), and if we are 4or 5 days late, they would get worried (at least we think!?)

After a day stranded, we decide to go towards an Indonesian fishing boat which is anchored about 5 miles away…

We hope they could sell us some diesel or maybe tow us toward the coast (we’re getting used to being towed on arrival in a new country ;-)…)

As we close in with the boat, we start to think it might only be an abandonned wreck. It has such a derelict aspect…but no, there is 15 indonesians on the boat…They get overexcited when they see us coming…They throw us a rope and Gregoire (who speak fluent indonesian given that is wife is from Java) starts chatting with them.

We are really disapointed (but happy for the environnement) to find out that their boat runs on canola oil and solar…and that they are fishing for sponges and are not planning to get back to Kupang for the next 3 months or so…

They suggest that we should try the petrol pumping stations which are close by.

Those platforms from BP and Exxon are shown on our maps, with a 5miles safety zone and we saw their flares the night before…we joked about asking them diesel…but know we think it might actually be an idea…

So we decide to motor towards the closest platform and get them on the VHF.

The platform...

WARNING : the story that follows is a typical french behaviour…I must say that I am not too proud of it…on another hand…but let me tell you the story first…

Closing in with the platform, we get in touch with their watch man, after we explained the problem and wait for a while, the very Field manager of the plant comes on air.

We explain the problem again…the field manager tells us off for entering the safety zone, then with his very british accent and “savoir-vivre”, he tells us that he cannot help us unless we are under some sort of hazard, have kids on board (we all big kids, but that wouldn’t have worked for the purpose…), lack of water, etc...to be honest, we are under no hazard…so we have to forget about the fuel and keep sailing...

The night gives us a bit of wind and we sail straight toward our destination. This goes right past the platforms, but going around would waste us the little wind we get so…straight on!!!

Early morning the next day, the wind dies, letting us stranded bang in their back yard…we can see all the platforms, the flares (we’re about 2-3miles!)

The gard vessel, called Céline and manned with a happy go lucky crew of indonesians comes by to tell us to go out of the safety zone. We tell them that we spoke to the field manager the day before and they couldn’t give us any fuel, so we have to sail as well as we can, which mean we will most probably spend the rest of the day in the safety zone…

We suggest that they could tow us out of the safety zone or give us petrol, but the same answer comes from the field manager : “we are not in a position…”

So we keep on drift-sailing for a couple of hours…during which we go a good 200m…

The field manager then comes back on air…he has found us a “hazard”…we are getting close to the flare (I believe he took this as an excuse to help us out/get rid of those annoying frogs in his back yard!!!)…

He sends the gard boat, which give us 100l of fuel (enough to get us to Kupang…they sure don’t pay their fuel very much those guys!!!).

The transport of the cans of petrol from the huge tug boat to the small Tequila (which looks like a nut ready to be crushed) is quite tricky…The captain does a few return trips with the dinghy…which is a bit of a mission…just look at the picture !!!

When we told the indonesian crew, who where laughing at the whole thing, that we were french, we heard the internationally known french word : Zizou!!!

We were quite happy to have a few pics of the french football player with us for presents.

We were very successful with them!!!

And of course, as per another sailing mathematics rule…the very night we got wind and cruised 4 to 5 knt in the right direction!!!

We eventually got to Kupang after spending only about 30L of the “free fuel” we got!…Should we put a “sponsored by BP” sticker on the bow????

As I say…any other people around the world, in our situation, would have used a bit of fuel to get out of the safety zone and stop annoying the working people with our crusers’ problem…

But us french, we had the nerve, and the “mauvaise fois” (this probably has no translation) enough to force them into giving us fuel by sitting in their back yard…

I must admit I am not proud of it…

On another hand, it is quite fun to get fuel free from BP (without including the 2hours cost of their huge tug boat!!!)…and…at least we got to Kupang on time to call our families and start enjoying Indonesia…

But if you hear a BP field manager complaining about the nerve of the french cruisers in Timor sea…well…remember us!!!!

All in all…another story to add to the “weird ways of getting out of a situation”…

Surely you will here motor about Higgins, the Perkins motor, sooner or later…!!!

11:12 - 16/11/2006 - Ajouter un commentaire