Ahoy, Sometimes strange things happen out here on the ocean.. so let me tell you some yarn.
2 days ago we were drifting in a vast blue endless desert. With no wind, in a dead calm sea. It was overcast and we had occasional sprinkle. It was cold and miserable and the crew was demotivated. So close to our destination but far out of reach. We couldn’t start the engine in fear we didn’t had enough diesel to enter the bay and dock ZERO safely. In short.. we had a bad day.
At dinnertime we were drifting due south with about 1.2 kn, the direction we came from and head earned every mile by pointing as high into the wind as possible. We had some vine for dinner and afterwards I went on deck and had a chat with king Neptune.
I shared my vine with him and asked him for help so we can end our amazing trip without being stuck here for days. So far so good. I do that sometimes but this time he must have been close or maybe he liked the vine. But..
Shortly afterwards we decided to start the engine. Just a bit, maybe an hour sor so to get at least the miles back we drifted south. For whatever reason I decided to just test the port tank again and I was sitting inside the engine room just next to the fuel selector valve and waited for the motor to start sucking air instead of diesel.. It couldn’t be long until that happens and I didn’t want to bleed the engine.
So I was sitting there and waited. 30 min passed , 1 hour passed, then 2 hours and I swapped place with Fay when her watch started. When I woke up 3 hours later the engine was still running from the port tank. Unbelievable??
During all that time we were returning the fuel from the engine to the starboard tank. There we have a manual fuelgauge in form of a clear tube. We transfered over 50 gal from port to starboard already!! What!! 50 gal!!!?
An hour later it happened. The engine started to stall and I switched to starboard tank. Altogether we found 60 gal of diesel in a tank we thought it was empty! It must have been, not only because the engine started to stall on that tank a few days ago already, but also from our calculations of usage. It made sense to be empty.
So believe it or not, we suddenly had 60gal which would be enough to motor all the way to San Diego bay, dock her and still have enough to fuel her up later.
First I was just surprised, happy and stoked but the it came to me. It must have been our mighty King Neptune who gave us his magical Support, I hoped to get some wind but he send us diesel. Either way it helps to get us out of the calm and reach our destination.
Thank you very much my King and I hope you don’t mind me telling this to to the world.
“King Neptune had turned vine into diesel.”
Guess who’s arriving soon?
Aloha Cris
Sent from far offshore..