Last night was by far the hottest night we have had so far. We both roasted all night long in our cabins with the small fan hardly making any difference. In the middle of the night a large cricked crawled over my face freaking me out. He soon got squashed and thrown out the window. There are still quite a few bugs and spiders in the boat to find and get rid of.
It seemed like just after I managed to nod off, the bloody alarm clock went off at 4 am. I got up and started both engines and the bloody port engine raw water pump V-belt was slipping, so I immediately shut down that engine and my plan was to fix it along the way. Outside was jet black as there was no moon. The sea was calm with a light breeze blowing, so I raised the main sail before heading out as I've done many times before.
After raising the main sail, we started to pull in the anchor and were surprised to find it snagged around a coral bombie. It was completely stuck in 5 m depth with 50 m of chain out. Luke tried for a while and couldn’t even get enough chain in to reach the bridle, and he overloaded the windlass and tripped the circuit breaker 3 or 4 times before I took over.
By using only the starboard engine, (the port engine was out of action) a bit of brute force and the windlass, slowly I managed to gain more chain. The chain appeared to be wrapped around a bombie or two that I didn’t see on the sonar when I circled around looking for a clear patch of sand. Normally I dive on the anchor after its set to ensure this sort of thing cannot happen, but I didn’t last night as we arrived just before dark and I was messing around getting the water maker up and running.
It took around 45 minutes of hard work to eventually get the anchor up and secured working in the pitch dark.
I walked back to the helm, by now completely disorientated and I paused to look around for the light house on the Eastern tip of the Island to give me my bearings for the direction to head back out to the open ocean. Seconds later, as soon as I saw the flashing light, I swung the wheel hard to port and engaged the propeller to head out to deep water.
All of a sudden there was a sickening thud and crunching sound that shook the whole boat.
WE HAD GROUNDED!!
I gunned the engine in reverse, but with only one engine operating, I lacked proper reverse steerage and the boat slowly swung around and the breeze filled the main sail and pushed us further onto the reef.
Everything seemed to be in slow motion, I was in shock and couldn’t believe what had just happened. Was all this just a bad dream or was this really happening. My mind was racing and I knew I only had minutes to act or there was a real chance I could lose the boat, suffer major damage or be stuck here for weeks waiting for a high enough tide to re-float the boat .
I don’t recall any reef being so close to where I anchored and I’m always very careful where I choose to anchor. In the confusion and time taken to get the anchor up in the dark, with a light breeze blowing on the main sail, we must have drifted a fair distance without either of us realising.
I yelled out to Luke to drop the main sail ASAP as there were more sickening thumps and shudders. It was so dark you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face. Looking around with the only working torch, all I could see was shallow coral reef all around the boat, everywhere I looked. It was a sickening sight. What to do? I didn't have any cannons I could chuck over like Cookie did in the Endeavor.
Immediately we dropped the dinghy and Luke in the dinghy tried to pull Sirocco from the stern while I gunned both engines in reverse, but she didn’t move an inch. I paused for a quick think and look around and it was apparent the tide was coming in which was a huge relief.
I could see two very large coral bombie’s just behind each stern and I was mindful of damaging the vulnerable rudders and sail drives, so I got Luke to attach the dinghy to the port bow and he tried to pull Sirocco forward and to the port side. Suddenly, she floated free and we moved off the reef, but in all the confusion in the pitch dark, we both frantically tried to get our bearings to figure out what direction to keep towing, but our freedom was short lived and we came to a crunching thud once again, stuck solid on the jagged coral reef. My heart sank.
I looked around and quickly got my bearings from the light house and several bright stars, then formulated a heading we had travel to get to deeper water, then I quickly got into the dinghy and did a quick recce all around the boat to see what the situation was.
There were large coral bombie’s right behind Sirocco once again and very shallow water on the starboard side and both bows looked like they were grounded. So I attached the dinghy to the port bow cleat and started to pull Sirocco at full power with the dinghy in reverse. At first nothing happened and I was starting to think it was pointless, so I really gave it shit and to my surprise, Sirocco started to come off the reef and move slowly in my direction, it was like a slow-motion dream and happening all too easy. I was amazed at how easy it was to tow her, weighing around seven tones.
I kept going in the same direction until she was in 6 – 8 m depth and then I quickly scurried up onto Sirocco through the safety lines doing the worm as fast as I could, then I ran to the helm and engaged the engine and slowly motored out into deeper water. Gradually the water got deeper and deeper and once we were way out in around 20 m or so, realizing we were now safe, we started breathing again and hugged each other in a sweaty embrace and said a few yahoos. We thanked our lucky stars we had dodged a bullet and made it to freedom. I never want to have to go through that again.
In the sailing community, there is an old saying "There are those who have ran aground, and those who have yet to run aground".
By now it was 6 am and the sun was coming up. The whole ordeal had lasted for over two hours. We were both shaking and operating on adrenaline, it had been a very close call. I then went into damage control and started checking the boat. Thankfully both bilges were dry and the steering was working OK, so was the starboard engine and sail drive and both engine rooms were dry.
When we were far enough out and in deep water, I dived over the side to look for damage. Both rudders and sail drives were completely untouched and the only damage I could see was some scratching on the bottom of both mini keels and some scratching in the antifouling paint on both bows, so we were very very lucky indeed.
I spent the next 3 hours in the port engine room cleaning up all the pulleys using the tang of a round file as a lathe, then the round file, wire brush and finally some wet & dry sand paper to clean them up as best as I could before smoothing them out. Hopefully this will solve our V-belt wearing issue for good.
Before
When I finally had the port engine clean and back together, and all belts tightened, I came up into the cockpit and could hear a fleeting alarm coming from somewhere, it was the low oil pressure alarm on the starboard engine, so I quickly started the port engine and then shut down the starboard engine. When I investigated the cause, I found the new oil filter I installed the other day after doing an oil change was leaking, and most of the engine oil had leaked out making a lovely mess. I then spent the next couple of hours cleaning up all the oil and tightening the oil filter and v-belts. When I went to top up the oil I discovered that I only had about one litre of engine oil left and it didn’t even reach the end of the dip stick.
Now I was very concerned that if the port engine failed again, we would be in deep shit. What a day, and WHAT ELSE could go wrong?
We continued making steady progress all day using only the port engine, slowed down by a strong 17 knot head wind and a nasty swell right on the nose. It was a long day, but eventually we arrived at Kilo around 17:10 and before we had even anchored, some kids rowed out to take selfies with us.
(We were later to discover, everywhere we went we were the first white people anyone had seen for more than two and a half years and we were treated like movie stars everywhere we went)
It had been a very long day and I was completely trashed. I had a shower on the back step and then we headed into the beach to ask a group of people lurking in the dark if there was someplace I could buy engine oil and get a feed. That's not as easy as it sounds when nobody speaks English and we didn't speak Bahasa. Some dodgy gangster looking dude stepped forward and offered us their motor bikes. I wasn’t quite sure if this was correct in translation, and next thing we know, both Luke & I were on the back of one of the motor bikes with one of the young selfie photo kids driving.
He rode a few kilometers, first through a very poor village over really rough tracks before we reached the main road where we dodged goats, people and cows walking or sitting on, or in the middle of the road in the dark before we came to a shop in the middle of nowhere that sold oil. I couldn’t believe my luck, so I bought two drums of quality Shell diesel oil and then we headed off to find a warung. We had a lovely feed of nasi goreng then the three of us climbed back on the tiny bike for the long trip back to the boat. I gave the dodgy gangster looking dude a friendly money handshake and we disappeared back into the night.
As the village was so poor, we locked everything including the saloon door just in case, but everything was OK the next morning.
Track Sirocco’s progress
