"We warped UHURU over to the fuel wharf and tried to fill her up with diesel."
"We warped UHURU over to the fuel wharf and tried to fill her up with diesel."
"We filled her up OK, but it was with sea water. I had left the engine raw water intake seacock open and the pipe not connected to the engine.
Yikes! (not quite the word used) – We’re sinking – Get those cowardly women and children out of the way – Save the crew! The good new is, the bilge pump works perfectly
"Hey, there's water down here . . ."
"The next shock came when we tried to fill the fuel tank. The breather system didn’t breath and we couldn’t get the screw-in inspection hatch to un-screw. We couldn’t fill the tank, so no engine. Since we couldn’t mess about on the fuel wharf, we used the dingy to move UHURU to a marina pen."
Here comes the rescue dinghy . . .
Towing UHURU to a "pen" . .
"Next, when the sailmaker arrived to fit the new sails, he found that he had used the wrong set of measurements. He had made the sails for some other boat!
As you can imagine, things at this point were definitely not going well. And, I was due shortly to sail in the annual “boy’s only” cruise to “Swains Reef.” [The reef is 120 miles out and some of it still not surveyed.]"
Last edited by Bill; 12-11-2006 at 08:41 PM.
And the frig was already loaded . . .
"As if this were not enough, or should I say, because of all this, I had a heart attack while at the marina.
"I'm now recovering a bit and have the go ahead to drive and do “light air sailing,” so me and my mate will be getting back to UHURU next week and try to solve some of her problems. There are still sail track and winches to fit and hopefully I can get UHURU out of that expensive marina pen without killing myself. On a positive note, the sailmaker says everything will be finished by the end of the week. And to make up for his "stuff up," he will fit lazy jacks and a boom bag into which the sail just drops."
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