Monday 16 March 2015

Who wants to clean the diesel tank?

Yech, not me.  But that's what we're gonna have to do next. 

There we were, having motor sailed right past Discovery Bay, our intended port of call when we left last night.  (Yes, Sunday night, don't ask.) We were headed for Ocho Rios and the sun was up and we were just over an hour and a half from arrival, and...  the engine stopped. 

But, being sailors, we pulled out the jib, set a course for land as close to wind as we could make it, and I sailed while the Captain tried his best to find and fix the engine problem while bouncing up and down in 1 to 2 meter swells. 

Finally, the choice became whether to head back out to sea and fix the engine problem or for the Captain to navigate for me to sail into Ocho Rios harbour and drop anchor, and the Captain chose to navigate.  We had a lovely sail up the channel, and with the help of another visiting sailor in his dingy, we were tacked (with a nudge from the dingy) in very light winds around the cruise ship terminal and dropped anchor, all without an engine.  Yay!

More good news - the Captain fixed the problem after a cup of tea and so our fuel filter is clean, although we're probably going to have to clean out the tank itself at our next stop.

And, as you can see, the cruise ship came in, so we may just wait to leave until she's gone. We came into the anchorage through the hole between the dock and one of the bollards, now taken up by her bow.

But we'll sort that out too, we've sorted out lots already today!

If you'd like to follow along,we are at: N18 24.616  W77 6.519
Copy the GPS location above (text in red), click through to http://netvicious.com/gps/ and paste the coordinates in the box in the upper left hand corner.  Push the 'Convert and map' button and you will see where we are. On the upper right hand side is an option to toggle map vs satellite view, which might be helpful when we get out to sea.