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Starblazer - 28/09/2014 – The annoying, the puzzling and the downright dangerous!



Before you read on, please be assured we are fit, well and unharmed, just a
little soggy because it has rained for the past 16 hours! Yesterday,
Saturday, passed much like Friday, with a mixture of motoring, motorsailing
and sailing. The afternoon was punctuated by three events. I’ll deal with
them in time order.

Annoying: John decided to make some more water so started the generator then
started the water maker. Within 5 minutes the water maker stopped because
the generator had stopped, showing an ‘engine overheat’ warning light. It
won’t suck up the cooling water even though John primed the system so he
suspects the impeller but that will have to wait until the main engine is
cool enough to lay on!

Annoying/downright dangerous: I started to prepare dinner, potatoes on to
boil and beef Bourguignon reheating gently, then the gas ran out. John
changed over the cylinder, I relit the gas and went to check a cookery book
for the oven temperature to cook the bread we had made. I was aware of a
bright flash, turned round and found the cooker engulfed in flames. My
first reaction was to yell to John, then I thought about the fire blanket
but quickly realised the remote gas switch was my best option. It worked
instantly. At the same time John became aware of hissing gas in
thegaslocker and rushed to turn off the tank. One or other of us put out
the fire with no damage, nothing scorched, just my nerves a little frayed.
The regulator had failed allowing full pressure gas to the cooker and it
obviously found some places to leak from. John found a spare, replaced it
and I continued cooking dinner.

Puzzling: Shortly after the gas emergency we were both down below when we
heard a dreadful whirring sound coming from the forward cabin. I quickly
turned off the power to the bow thruster, silence. John turned the switch
off on the engine control panel and I switched the power back on, still
silence. What we haven’t checked is if the foot switches still work, a task
for later.

This log is being written somewhat later than usual because we had a
difficult night. It started raining shortly before my 2300-0200 hours
watch, we were sailing nicely and the wind behaved. John took over at 0200,
at 0400 I was awakened by the noise of wind and the jib rattling the boat so
I got up to see if John needed help. The wind had veered (gone clockwise)
about 90 degrees and increased to 20-25 knots. All John could do was follow
the wind as it was pitch black and he wanted to put off tacking until he
could see what we were doing. I stayed up until shortly after 0600, by which
time the wind had settled down a bit and dawn was lightening the sky. We
tacked Starblazer, then I went back to bed for another two hours and John
stood a double watch. After breakfast he went to bed for 3 hours to catch
up.

Not much else to report, except we had ham and tomato omelettes served in
wraps for lunch yesterday and used up the last of the Niue honey on the home
made yogurt for dessert. We are doing our best to finish off the prohibited
foods!

Joyce


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