Saturday, August 8, 2009

Breakfast time drama !

The day begins, it is 8:00 a.m. and I am hardly awake. I get up on deck
to start the main engine which has been idle since July 25 while
Jean-Francois starts preparing breakfast. And then I hear "Gaz is
finished !". I am surprised since the last time we changed the gaz
bottle was July 20, but if there is no gaz there is no gaz, and I start
going through the routine procedure to change the gaz bottle. Removing
the supposedly empty one, I found it heavy for an empty, but if there is
no gaz, there is no gaz. So I switch to a new bottle, put everything
back together and tell Jean-Francois "OK, go ahead". Reply "No gaz !"
Then we start fiddling with everything trying to understand why this
damn gaz would not go through. We have all kinds of theory on this O
ring looking bad to this fitting not going all the way, so on . .
.Finally, light comes (late because it's early morning) and I start
suspecting the electromagnetic valve. I check the electric wires and I
don't see anything wrong. Anyway, it's breakfast time and I am not going
to play mechanic all day. I remove the electromagnetic valve, put the
hose back on the bottle, and it works. FINE ... Let's have coffee. But,
wait a minute. If that bottle did not last more than 19 days, we better
start saving as much as we can to last until Hiva Oa. So, we decide to
heat up the water with the microwave, which is not gimballed. So we use
a large container with hardly anything in it, hoping that it is not
going to run around the oven with the roll. It works, but the water is
luke warm, the coffee does not brew properly and it is a lousy coffee at
that.
But somehow, it helped my brains to kind of wake up just a little and I
realised that if it was the electromagnetic valve that failed, it
probably means that the bottle that we replaced was not empty. So, I
switched again and it worked. So, tomorrow morning, we will be able to
enjoy the regular breakfast with a properly brewed coffee.
But that was a good hour of stress to start the day.

Other item, as planned Jean-Francois will be leaving me in Noumea. The
person with whom I was discussing the possibility that she would join me
in Papeete for an open ended duration finally decided to call it off. I
am now again looking for a crew to join me ideally in Papeete, but
certainly in Noumea.
The planned itinerary of Papy Jovial stands now like that : Papeete from
September 5 to 25. Sailing to Noumea from Sep 25 to October 25 via
Rarotonga and Tonga.
Sailing 8 to 12 days from Noumea to Whangarei on November 15. Stay in
New Zealand until Feb 1st. Sail to Sydney and stay in Sydney until March 15.
Then, it becomes less predictable as far as dates are concerned, but
sail around North Australia to Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin and Dampier.
Then jump across the Indian Ocean to Coco Islands, Reunion and Capetown.
Sail to Saldanha Bay then island of St Helen, Cabedelo in Brazil and
sail to France as soon as the hurricane season of summer 2010 permits.
If you read this blog and know someone who might be interested, email me
to my email address at sea if you have it. Otherwise, email
"plumalire@free.fr" and the message will be forwarded to me.

Today was very much like yesterday. By the way I made a mistake
yesterday, we actually did 20 more miles than I stated.
Today we are 1504 miles from Fatu Hiva on a direct line. We covered 151
miles over the ground and closed on the destination by 133 miles.
We are still rolling heavily at times, but the weather is continuously
improving in terms of temperature and cloud cover.

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