Fremantle to Adelaide, Australia
In order to release the suspense left by my last blog, I can
happily report that we managed to start the main engines! On top of this, we even
managed to simulate a semblance of order by the time we pulled away from our
Fremantle berth at 1000hrs on Monday 19th August. It was a beautiful
sunny day and all the voyage crew were out on deck waving goodbye to friends
who were standing on the dock to see them off. The Chief Engineer (Marco) was
kind enough to make me a coffee whilst I dashed up and down the stairs at his
command to set the engines up for a long run (as there was minimal wind and not
enough for sailing).
We have a lovely voyage crew mostly made up of Brits and
Ozzies but with occasional American thrown in for good luck. We have four
“Wheelies” (wheelchair users) on board as well as a few “Wobblies” (people who
walk with crutches/sticks/walker etc.), a couple of blind people and a couple
of deaf people as well as a whole host of other bods ranging from 16-78 years
of age. Its great working with such a diverse group of people and it makes
chatting at the ship’s bar a real pleasure!
As we sailed out of the (relative) shelter of the harbour,
the swells started building and we were sailing in a direction that meant that
the sea and wind were “up the chuff” (i.e. pushing from behind us). This makes
Nelly roll like a pig and before long we had some green looking voyage crew.
The next morning I walked across the deck for breakfast and had to step over
lots of bodies who were tentatively sucking at pieces of dry toast!
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| My friend "Charlie" with his cheeky smile in the engine room |
We had an entire day where I was almost entirely devoted to
cleaning out our two grey water tanks using the ships “Charlie” (vacuum
cleaner, see picture)….Not quite poo, but distinctly more smelly! Grey water is
the water that drains from showers and sinks (as supposed to the black water
that drains from the heads (toilets)). Although the job was smelly and minging
and generally horrible- seeing Charlie’s smiley face always makes me happy…..Is
that really sad?
However, this experience (once again) taught me that
“Charlie”,” Tam” and “ladder” are three words that should never appear in a
sentence together.
Scene:
- Tam at bottom of ladder hovering out the scum at the bottom of the grey water tank.
- Charlie at the top of the ladder slowly filling up.
- Swell causes Charlie to fall down the ladder.
- Tam gets covered in grey water…..Lovely!
The sail to Albany saw us rounded the second of the great horns in
Nelly’s “Sail the World” campaign: Cape Leeuwin. I wasn’t on board for her
rounding the Cape of Good Hope, but I will be on to round Cape Horn in
December. It was a lovely sail into Albany harbour as we had to alter course to
avoid hitting a couple of Southern Right Whales that were swimming in the
middle of the shipping channel. There are some beautiful islands around this
part of Australia and I allowed myself to image running along the coastal
paths.
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| Southern Right Whales in the channel entering Albany, South Australia |
As we settled in Albany I went down into the engine room to change over
generators so that we were using the Port genny instead of the Starboard genny.
This is a standard procedure and involves:
1.
Initial check of the incoming genny
2. Turn
on incoming genny
3. Check
incoming genny and let it warm up
4. Put
incoming genny “on the board” and take the outgoing genny off (meaning that the
new genny is now taking the load of the ship’s electrical needs)
5. Allow
outgoing genny to cool down and turn it off
6.
Final check of new genny
It was at number 6 that I noticed the smoke pluming out of the Port
genny! I quickly turned the STBD genny back on and onto the board and turned
the PT genny off and reported to the Chief. What had happened was that a fuel
line had gone and leaked fuel onto the lagging on the exhaust which had heated
up and started smoking. …..It was a near miss, but no damage was done (apart
from a bit of smoke in the engine and no one was hurt. The only annoyance was
that I spent the afternoon looking for spare parts and we had to work in a
smokey engine room for a bit. As the Chief said, we didn’t even learn anything
from it- it just illustrated how important all the checks are!
The fun continued on the way out from Albany where we responded to a
bilge alarm only to find the engine room full of water! A rusty pipe connection
had gone and thus allowed water to gush out of the refrigeration system. No
major issue…Although it did take me the best part of the next day to suck all
the water out of the bilge! :-S
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|
Sailing into a new
day on the way from Albany to Adelaide
|
I then spent 5 days lying in my cabin in the dark feeling rubbish.
Somehow I managed to get a raging eye infection (in both eyes) that left me
seriously visually impaired and feeling generally ill and weak. I feel awful
for the extra work that this has put on Marco and the rest of the crew! Walking
around the ship without being able to see anything has demonstrated to me just
how well the Lord Nelson is set up
for blind people. If someone as clumsy as me can navigate from my cabin (at the
stern of the vessel) to the upper mess without tripping or falling down a
ladder then it’s quite an achievement! Hurray for the Jubilee Sailing Trust
(JST)!
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