After breakfast I tightened the STBD engine raw water V-belt and then we headed off. It was another 40 mile / 6+ hour passage, similar to yesterday. Early in the morning the wind picked up to 17 knots right on the noise with a nasty white cap swell, making the ride very unpleasant.
After a while I raised the main sail and altered course by 30 - 40 degrees to increase the velocity made good and to dampen the ride a bit. Not long after raising the sail, the bloody STBD engine over-temperature alarm went off. I went down stairs to take a look and the new raw water pump V-belt was totally shredded after only about 60 nautical miles or about 8 - 9 hours of use. This was very concerning.
I spent the next 3 hours getting bashed around in the hot greasy engine room trying to fix the problem. I wire brushed the hell out of the 5 pullies and tried to sand them as smooth as possible with wet & dry sand paper, but they were so difficult to reach in a very confined space.
I managed to improve the raw water pump pully quite a bit, but the pully on the engine was in really bad condition and was corroded very badly. I started the engine and being very careful not to lose a finger, I used a screwdriver (and the tang of a file) as a lath to remove the big rust chunks, rust was flying in all directions, then I used a round file to smooth it out, followed by the wire brush and then finally the wet & dry sand paper.
I made a vast improvement to what it used to be and I'm hoping it's enough to stop wearing the belts out. I then installed a new belt, tested it and it was working fine. Another hour was spent cleaning up and by then I was totally wasted having lost a bucket of sweat in the process.
An hour or so later as we were approaching Palau Medang, we crossed a line on the Navionics chart (on the chart plotter) and on the Eastern side there were no depth contours, so I had to navigate with my Navionics chart on my phone. It was 2 1/2 years ago since I last navigated through here and I can’t remember if I had charts for East Indonesia or not? I was sure I bought a new chart for Indonesia before I left Australia
I dug through my chart table drawer and tried a couple of different chart memory cards and yet I was not able to find a working map with depth contours, this had me totally confused. We were now on the final approach to our anchorage for the night and it would be dark in about 40 minutes, so now it will have to wait until tomorrow as I have many other things to do.
The entry into the Palau Medang anchorage was strait forward, but I took it nice and slow just in case and we made our way into around 5 meters of water and dropped the pick on a large patch of sand in a beautiful location a few hundred meters off a lovely palm lined beach. I would have liked to have gone ashore for a look around as it looked so nice here, but we have to leave very early tomorrow to get to our next destination before dark.
The chart was not accurate and showed us anchored in the middle of the Island
Luke got bitten on the nuts by something last night (maybe a spider) and was feeling tired all day and so went to bed early, while I sat up with the water maker running. I wrote some notes, checked the weather for tomorrow and our passage plan and feasted on some cup noodles.
Track Sirocco’s progress
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