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| Day 98 |
13 July 2000 |
| Aru Sea |
| "Pumping Elm Near Aru" |
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Despite our disappointment at having to start the engines, and
despite the fact that Duyfken is now punching straight into a
fresh headwind, the crew is far from gloomy. As Duyfken
labouriously climbs over each crest and tumbles with a jolt down
into each trough the we all go about our daily routine as if
nothing has changed.
Members of the watch on duty take it in turns to steer for an
hour, then keep lookout for an hour, then join the merry workers
on the tasks Gary has set. Today it is scraping varnish. Did I
say merry? At least the engine noise drowns out the
tooth-numbing screech of the scrapers. Then, of course, every
three hours we pump the bilges using the two hollowed out
elm-tree pumps just forward of the binnacle (compass box).
Nic calls out 'Pump time!' and starts filling two buckets with
sea water. She takes the buckets into the cabin where the rest
of the watch, those not steering or on lookout, wait at the
handles, preferably two to a pump. She starts tipping water down
the open tops of the pumps. As each bucket empties the two at
the handles start pulling up and down with gusto. With luck this
primes the pump. Sometimes, though, the vigorous flailing of the
handles is rewarded only by slurpings and gurglings from the
bowels of the ship as the pump loses suction, drawing air into
its shaft, and the priming procedure must be repeated. Once both
pumps are primed the wooden mechanisms move up and down in
syncopated rhythm as they raise the water about four metres from
the bilge, and the operators raise four respective sweats at the
other end of the handles. A gratifying sloshing sound indicates
that bilge water is pouring from the upper section of the pump
bodies, through canvas chutes, into a water-way cut into a deck
beam, and out over the side. The other rewarding sound is the
steady clunk, clunk, clunk, as the leather foot-valves open and
close at the bottom with each stroke of the handles. A few
minutes of this and the slurping, gurgling noises start up
again, welcome this time because they indicate the bilge is now
empty
Is Duyfken sinking? Why do we have to pump her out every three
hours? All wooden ships leak a little. It's quite normal. Don't
panic. Pumping by hand like this at regular intervals is an
excellent way of monitoring how much water she is making. If it
were to take us significantly longer than five minutes to pump
her dry we would know something was amiss.
The off-watch crew write their journals, read books, lounge
around and catch up on sleep. There are no sails to trim, no
tacking stations, so life is relatively easy.
Here is a small irony. Because we are now using Duyfken's
engines to take a more direct route, our track more closely
parallels the original Duyfken's voyage. Her path was also
fairly direct because she had the north-west monsoon behind her
and didn't have to tack, although she was further south and, in
all probability, called in at Aru. The track on the old chart
shows her coming close into a small island off the coast,
probably near Dobo. Since the purpose of her voyage was to seek
out trade it seems unlikely that she sailed past without
stopping. It is also likely that Janszoon would have asked the
Aruans what they knew of the lands further east and south. How
much information he was able to glean we don't know, but it is
likely the Aruans could tell him something. As Nicko points out,
it is scarcely conceivable that the race of mariners who
colonised Madagascar centuries before would not have been aware
of the huge continent only a couple of hundred miles distant to
the south and east. Yet for the Europeans, everything east of
here was the great unknown.
From here on the original Duyfken crew would have been keeping a
particularly sharp lookout. Rocks and reefs, shoals and
sand-banks, strange sea-creatures, who knew what lay in their
path. I try to imagine what it would be like, pressing on along
our course with no knowledge of what lay ahead, no chart, no
sailing directions, nothing. I fail, as any attempt to imagine
the unknown must fail. What an adventure that must have been.
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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