Saturday 25 June 2011

LANGKAWI. Sailing aside while we fix something that was not broken.

David is well although he is getting even more forgetful... nutty maybe....he left the cap of the deck filler the other evening and we went to bed. It poured with rain and put over 30ltrs of water into the fuel tank. Unknowingly we started the gen set to charge batteries first thing in the morning and ....yes...engine stopped....oh dear...darn well we started the main engine...still unaware that the water was in the tank and guess what!!! it stopped too. Now we had a very alarmingly decreasing power supply and no motor to pull the anchor to sail and no wind anyway. We pumped all the water out of the tank then David cleaned all the lines out and removed and replaced all the filters but there was water still in the rotary injector pump on the volvo so no point in trying that. Genset tried  to run but kept stopping......... had to call Noel;. a fellow from a near by marina to come and tow us back into the marina where we spent the rest of the evening and following morning with a good friend of Ten Large...my favorite boat in the whole world as it happens......Brian came over: he had over 300 trucks in the UK.....never a Volvo!!!.....he had a trucking business. he once bought a Volvo truck but he sent it for repairs after a government motor test and when he got the bill....he told them to keep the truck and the bill!!! Anyway he came over, and together with his expertise they removed the injectors we had just replaced....grr....and that enabled the poor old starter motor to turn the motor over without bursting into a ball of smoke......then they found a bleed screw on the pump and although it was time consuming  we eventually got the fuel back running and the water out. Only ended up changing one injector on the Volvo and one on the Yanmar Genset. Phew!!

Next morning we left the marina again ..... and lo and behold....he had left the deck filler cap off again....lucky I spotted it before we sailed into the ocean and filled it up with salt water!!!.

Then on the run to Kuah...about 10nm....he lost the cap of one of the jerry cans over the side so decided to lower the Dingy to retrieve it!. Well we got the cap back eventually and then towed the dingy the last bit as a storm was approaching....all good till we get to the anchorage...forget the dingy is there...drop the anchor and back up....and ....you guessed it....run right over the dingy tow line and cut it off. Very lucky the dingy was along side and we were able to grab it or he would have had to go for a swim!!

This morning he dived on the prop and removed the tow line!!
So you see the female hormones have kicked in and are working well now!!!