The Diesel Must Flow

For eleven years we have never had a fuel problem. It appears all good thing must come to an end. Two and a half days of shake, rattle and roll across Bass Strait will stir up accumulated "crud" in the fuel tank. The water separating filter tried it best to cope but it finally gave up. Unable to pass fuel, the engine was soon starved of that vital liquid, spluttered and stopped. At least it was daylight albeit blowing 30 knots in 3m breaking seas just off  Wineglass Bay. Not to worry, we are a yacht after all. So we deployed more sail, hand steered because the auto-pilot could not cope and then sailed through a narrow passage onto anchor.

Magnificent and rugged rock walls near Schouten Passage with signature

Tassie orange algal highlights.

 

It sounds so straightforward, however, as soon as we turned into the opening in the cliffs that forms Schouten Passage, the wind was blocked. The sails hung a little limp. Gulp. Fortunately, both the swell and the tide was in our favour and with the help of an occasional slight puff of wind, we were eventually sucked through the pass by the tide at barely 2 knots, providing plenty of time to examine the rock faces which were unnervingly close. There is never a dull moment.

100% focus. The end of 52 hour passage soooo close!

Now to sail onto anchor; something we'd never done before. We pulled out our small inner headie to make the anchor locker accessible and free of flapping sails and everything simpler to handle. The inner headie requires only 30 or so turns on the winch to furl it up, versus 76 for the big headie, meaning it's far more manageable. Fellow cruisers who'd already anchored ahead of us couldn't work out what we doing. Having sailed through Schouten Passage, why were we now sailing up and down the beach. Showing off perhaps. A victory lap? A further problem had emerged. The anchor winch requires the motor to be running. We faced the prospect of manually deploying the anchor and despite the anchor winch having been serviced only 10 weeks before, it was jammed. We wanted this passage to come to an end, be still, have an 'anchor dram' or two and go to sleep. No more challenges PLEASE!

The rocks were quite close. A bag of jelly snakes on hand to help with the stress and excitement.

Tacking away from the beach, The Bloke had the F@#k Box on stand-by while he searched the Mechanical Toolbox for the rubber mallet with the hope of 'persuading' the gypsy to release. No joy. What to do? Perhaps we could try just engaging the starter motor battery by turning the ignition key to the 'on' position to open the electric circuit to the hand-held winch controller? Right now we needed to cash in on some extra luck. Joy of joys, it turns out that the anchor winch will operate without the motor actually running. Blessed be Jeanneau!  The anchor winch drags a huge current which is why it's on the same circuit as the motor. No doubt the batteries would otherwise be spent in a heartbeat. It makes sense for the anchor winch to operate at the same time as the motor which is creating current.  We were dropping rather than attempting to retrieve the anchor; gravity and momentum from the combined weight of the anchor and chain would do the work so long as the circuits were open. This was a happy discovery. Phew!

No time to waste. 

Now to fix the problems. Anchor drams were on hold. At least we were not bouncing about in the ocean and were finally still. Sorting out the jammed gypsy on the anchor winch was fairly easy. Plenty of WD-40 and The Bloke's enthusiastic banging with the rubber mallet did the trick. Now for the bigger task - dismantling our bunk to access the primary fuel filter; replacing it and testing if the motor would run. With luck, this would be the source of the problem and not something more sinister.

Blocked and cruddy filter. Job done saving the engine.

Despite having just completed a 52 hour journey The Bloke got on with the task immediately. The replacement was successful, the motor started up straight away, meaning that the problem was identified and rectified. Then came the inevitable debriefing and discussion on what we could have done to prevent this unfortunate occurrence.

The anchor dram was the sweetest of any we can recall. By now it was 13th December although not a Friday. Perhaps this is why there was a happy ending.

Investigations and discussions with other cruisers soon revealed that a duel filter system is used by many cruising yachts. All you need do is duplicate the water separation filter, connect the two filters with valves to enable them to be isolated and replace the input and output fuel lines. What could go wrong? Well a lot really but it had to be done. The Bloke ordered parts on-line from our anchorage so that the project to be commenced as soon after our arrival in Hobart as possible. Christmas would create a non-negotiable delay but at least all the parts would be to hand. We were resolved - this is never to happen again. The diesel must flow!