Aground en route to Australia

Today was not such a good day, on many levels. OK on others. The Plan was to leave today for Perth. We went in the morning to the Botanical Gardens, which were stunning. After hitting the Post Office and before re-supplying at the Super-U. Then there was a huge hideous traffic jam, then we had our lunch at out favorite Isle Maurice restaurant, the Captainerie. Then a long torrential, gully-washing, frog-choking downpour. But we were on the Maggie B more or less on our time-line to depart for Perth. We motored proudly out of the Marina for the Customs dock. Big, open harbor with lots of Blue Water boats coming and going. No channel markers. Dredged to 17 feet, per the chart.

We ran aground solidly just 200 feet off of the Five Star hotel that had sheltered us. Maybe only 20 yards from mid channel. No buoys but it was on one chart I had. A three foot spot. Distracted, inattentive, concern about Customs, maybe a bit of pride and show off’ness.

We stuck hard at dead low tide. No problem in Maine where you get 12 feet of tide. Here it is less than a foot. We got marvelous support from another yacht. The Mauritius Coast Guard came over just to be sure nobody was dying.

We ran one line ashore to drag us back out, like a kedge, but attached to granite. We ran one line from the main tops to heel us over. Finally, after local advice and lots of lead-lining, we finally kedged, warped and heeled us off the rock. Whew! It took four hours. It was awful.

We returned to the Marina, invited the French couple that had helped us over for drinks, and had a group hug.

Australia tomorrow, we hope.

All is well.

Realities of the tropics
Friday 12:00, 01.26.2007

It is so funny to get up in the morning, have a crew meeting over the first cup of coffee, work out a totally reasonable timeline for the day, and then watch it totally unravel when faced with the realities of the tropics.

We are in Port Louis, Mauritius, still in the harbor. Today was the day to get engine work finished, fill up on diesel, and load food resupply. Surely also plenty of time to go to the famous garden in Pamplemousse? Not.

It is noontime and we are at the Taylor-Smith yard across the harbor from the marina. It is a famous old yard, with twin 160-year old drydocks. We are here to get some minor engine work completed and to get diesel. Two hundred gallons. There is a big Shell dock, but they only talk in tons of fuel and in any case it is closed today for some vague reason (Friday? Early weekend??). So our contacts at Taylor-Smith, who have been very helpful, offered us 200 gallons from their supply. No problem? Not really. We had thought that after refueling in Madagascar from a filling station and carrying jerry cans all over town, and then the Seychelles where there was endless negotiation and very difficult access, that we had seen it all.

Here it is amazingly, innovatively complex. Rube Goldberg would be proud. The fuel is put into 55 gallon drums, carried by a forklift to the edge of the dock, pipes and tubes are fitted. A Five Ton crane lumbers over, the drum is chained up horizontally, and hoisted alongside the Maggie B, the fuel is slowly drained out into our tanks. Another drum is brought over, ready to be hoisted. STOP! It is Eleven O’clock — lunchtime (we have been here since 0830). We fear that there might be a siesta in the union contract. Did I mention payment is cash only?

Our engine is in good shape. We have changed the oil, plus oil and fuel filters on both the Yanmar and the Onan generator. We had been having oil pressure indicator problems and the mechanics at Taylor-Smith were able to replace the pressure indicator, and now it works fine. They have also made a T-junction, so that on the side of the engine we will continue to have the electronic sensor, which reads out in the cockpit, but also an old-fashioned “steam gauge” that will sit on the side of the engine to confirm the electronic reading. Belt and suspenders.

Regular readers may recall that we had an water pump impeller failure on the Onan generator back in Durban. There are photos on the web site. It failed after about 450 hours. No impeller, no water circulation, and the engine overheats. The Yanmar had gone about 750 hours on its first impeller, and their manual suggests changing after 1000 hours. But we had a spare, we were here with good mechanics, why not change it now? We pulled it out and, horrors! it had lost one vane (we found it) and another was torn and ready to come off. Whew!

So what happens next? Hopefully we will finish up here directly, go get food supplies, have some tourist fun this afternoon, have a great dinner, and be off for Perth sometime tomorrow, Saturday. The winds are favorable (Commanders forecast on the web site). Mauritius is marvelous and worth weeks to explore, but we are Blue Water Sailors, Bound for South Australia!

All is well.