Monday, 26th July 2010
01.30hrs Scotty left the marina by taxi and headed to the train station and caught the train to Cairns, where he will be joined be "Itti Ollie" later in the week. Later he said the train was not a nice trip, and the train itself was dirty and smelly.
Skipper was crashed out in bed at this stage, but did say his goodbye earlier.
Scotty, was good company and very handy on the boat, he was also popular with the people on the trip. But all good things have to come to an end, and he has to go home to finish his building project.
07.30hrs Skipper jumped out of the bunk as there was a lot going on today. The mechanic, Mark, was to return and work on the generator. Chris, the electrician and electronic guy, was also to return along with the guys from Airley Beach, who were to look at increasing the output from the watermaker.
08.30hrs Aileen took off in the bus to town, while skipper had a chat with some of the other Irish skippers on the trip, 3 others in total, and all from up north, Donegal and Derry. Its great to see that the Irish can still get onto the boats around the world.
12.00hrs Progress is being made all round. Mark feels he has identified the problem with the generator and expects the parts to arrive tomorrow to repair the problem.and guess what, its electronic, the blooming govenor. The mechanic from Nautisport in Tahiti, insisted it was mechanical and not electrical and he would not be able to fix it. As the saying goes, "Doctors differ and patient die" and our generator nearly died as a result....
While we are on the subject of Nautisport (Tahiti), Chris confirmed that in fact they did damage the hardware on our E120 series while repairing the chart plotter in Tahiti, and this resulted in the loss of our radar. You may or may not remember how insulting the boss of Nautisport became when we suggested they messed up... Anyway, Chris has got our radar back and running properly, yipeeee! one more thing off the list. We ordered the LED lights for the inside of the boat, and it seems they will arrive on Thursday before we leave. The watermaker guys rang to say their man was sick, so they would not be here today. That's boats.............
12.00hrs Skipper hired a taxi and took Scottys plastic coffin, loaded with all his loose belongings and his timber sculpture, to the post office in Mackay and sent it off to Scotland. Whew, what a job, and especially when they wanted a list of what was in the box. Ahh! sure, we just made up a list, as we hadn't a clue of what was in the thing.
15.00 hrs We decided to replace the cable on the backstay for the SSB. This radio has not really worked for us at any stage, so we will be real happy if it can be sorted, so we will see...
We also need to get our AIS up and running again. At the moment, it just receives, but does not transmit. Yesterday, we spoke to our friends, Johnny and Mary from Mallow, who are at present in France having a break, gosh, we haven't been in touch for ages,and its great to be in chatting again..........................
We had lorry loads of emails over the weekend, and thats great, we love to hear from everybody, That reminds me, Fats must be nearly home at this stage, and then there's our I.T man, Arnaud, who did a great job in looking after our rib for the summer back in Ireland. We had a long chat with our daughter Sarah, poor Sarah is dogged out from minding her brothers dog, but otherwise in great form.
17.30hrs We went to "Ocean Jasper" for drinks, a few G & T's and we were all flying again. Later we went to Angelo's for dinner, not as good as the "Starlight Restaurant" but we survived another night. Later still, the skipper brought the blogs up to date before hitting the scratcher.
Well, that's it for today.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)
PS By the way, It seems that we won the overall prize for the 1150 mile leg from Port Vila, Vanuatu, to Mackay. Brilliant!