Painful but funny!

oldfella · Nov 29, 2007

Ok so we are a couple of days into this trip. The weather was bad, grey, rainy and generally pretty blustery with a Southeaster blowing at us. 25/30knots. Guess which direction we needed to head.........yes Southeast. so head wind for the first part of this trip. This time of year here we generally have a good stiff northerly blowing so would have been ideal. So we are motoring and making slow steady progress. After anchoring up overnight on a small reef in the middle of nowhere we set off at first light. Making reasonable progress we motor on for about eight to ten hours. Now mind you many of these types of sail boats do not have a fuel gauge in them. You know what the fuel capacity is and the fuel consumption rate of the motor is. From info I was given by the boats owner, whom I am delivering this boat to we should have around 350 litres of fuel on board. the fuel consumption rate I was quoted was 3 litres per hour. So this gives me around 116 hours of running. So you factor in a margin and cut this back to 100 hours. Well you can imagine my surprise when we are passing a place called cape Hillsborough that the motor surges a couple of times and then quits. I immeadiatly think, there is no way the tank is dry, just no way. I have only been motoring for around 20 hours all up. Anyway it's emergency stations now, because the wind is pushing us in towards the rocky coast of the cape. We were not that far from the cape as we were passing. So it's hoist up a sail and head east away from the coast. But this is not the way we need to be heading. I tell my crew that we will head back south to the protected bay at a little resort community called seaforth. We will anchor up in the bay and call for assistance in the morning. Daylight is running out fast so we turn south and head back about 12 kms. Now anchoring up without a motor is not easy, you generally will only get one chance at it. I pick a spot on the chart, look at the minimum depth for that spot and say let's go for it. We did just that. Got the anchor set in one try. I was somewhat relieved at this......................
Continued below.......................

oldfella · Nov 29, 2007

Cont.........

All is good and we are at safe anchor. After all of these event needless to say we are hungry. So it's steak and veg for dinner. No way was I going to go hungry on this trip. Prime filet beef and choice fresh produce was on board.

So we wake up and have a good solid breakfast and get on the radio for some fuel. The fuel gets delivered to the boat ramp and i run out in the tender to get it. Bring the fuel back and get setup to pour it in the tank. Now here's the problem with this. You have a twenty litre drum of diesel fuel and a funnel to pour in to. Add to this the action of small waves on the boat and it makes for some trichy pouring. here I am with a twenty litre drum of fuel, trying to get more in the funnel than on the deck, but some was always going to spill. I get 60 out of 80 litres in and proceed to pour the last twenty in. As I am pouring a set of slightly bigger waves reaches the boat and starts a more severe rocking action. My right foot slips on the deck and rams straight into the cleat in front of the fuel tank filler. The corner of the cleat nails me in between my big toe and second toe. I mean rams, with all 270lbs of me. Now I did not drop the fuel, God knows how I managed to hang on to that b ut the pain shot through my foot and up to my brain so fast I could not believe it. I sat there not knowing whether to cry, swear, throw a fit or what. I mean this shit hurt big time. My first thoughts are it's boken, it hurt enough to be broken. But nothing i can do for it now. just taped them up and kept on pouring fuel. We ended up getting towed in to Mackay Marina because I had trouble bleeding the injectors on this old diesel. But i went to the base hospital once we were settled and got some medical attention. Luckily it was not broken but just very badly bruised. I was very sore and worse for wear the next day though. But the trip continued from there.