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| Day 102 |
17 July 2000 |
| Amamapere |
| "World's Best Practice, Bunkering Procedure" |
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Breakfast time comes with no sign of our fuel delivery. I'm a
little disappointed, since I want to get underway this morning,
but not very surprised. We try to radio Mr Loi, our fuel
supplier, with no success.
At about ten the friendly police launch ranges alongside with
our friend who was searching for gas and filters. He hands back
our money and shakes his head apologetically. No gas, no
filters.
The morning creeps by, the crew work on rig maintenance, Jane
starts thinking about lunch, but still no sign of our fuel. We
try the radio again. Mr Loi answers. He, too, is apologetic. He
has the fuel loaded into drums and the drums loaded onto his
boat. But he can't get it to us because he can't buy any
outboard fuel. All the suppliers have run out.
The friendly policeman comes to the rescue. He has contacts and
can get some outboard fuel. He roars off down the creek,
obviously not shy of using a bit of outboard fuel himself.
Lunch distracts us from the waiting. Jane has bought some mud
crabs from a fisherman in one of the local canoes. They are
delicious. The wonderful thing about crabs is they are
impossible to eat fast. Every morsel must be savoured, no matter
how hungry you are. Eating crabs is the ideal activity when you
are waiting for five drums of diesel to emerge out of a mangrove
forest.
At four in the afternoon the fuel boat finally arrives. They ask
us to pass down our pump. We shake our heads. We have no pump.
They have no pump either. We are back to syphon technology. Mick
and Ben go down into the boat and syphon the fuel into twenty
litre drums, then hand them up to us on the deck of Duyfken. We
carry them to the filler pipe and pour them through a funnel,
then pass the drums back down to the boat. A chain gang develops
and the drums start to rotate more rapidly. All is going well,
except that the fuel is very dirty. It is full of grit and
scale. Mick doesn't want to put it in the tanks without
straining it because of our short supply of filters, but the
cloth we are straining it through keeps clogging up.
After a lot of experimentation we hit on the following
procedure. Each 200 litre drum is lifted onto the quarterdeck
and the hose stuck inside. Mick stands underneath and sucks on
the pipe until the diesel starts to flow. He spits out what he
manages not to swallow and directs the hose into a bucket, over
which Jane and Gary hold a cloth as a filter. When the bucket is
half full Gary pours it into the tank through the funnel, over
which Greg holds another cloth as a final filter. One of Jane's
old sarongs has just the right porosity for the job. In this
way, ten litres at a time, we load 1000 litres of fuel. It takes
us four and a half hours and by the time we are finished the
entire ship, all the crew and all their clothes are covered in a
greasy, slippery coating of diesel fuel.
About a dozen of the locals have climbed on board to watch the
show. They are especially entertained when, half way through a
pour, Jane's pants start falling down. She has no spare hands to
pull them up again, so she calls out to Andrea who comes running
to the rescue, holding them up until Jane has her hands free
again. All in a day's work for the Duyfken crew.
With the fuel on board and paid for, Jane takes the rest of our
Rupiah ashore to the village. There is a small kiosk where she
stocks up on rice, biscuits and tins of sardines. She says the
villagers are as poor as anything. They can't afford the rice at
the kiosk. They are aging prematurely and their teeth are
falling out. Selling us their fish and crabs has been a small
boon for these families. Strange, that such poverty can exist
here while in the very next inlet in the mangroves thrives a
busy port servicing the world's richest gold mine. Too strange
for a simple sailor like me to fathom.
No gas and no filters, but we have got some fuel. One out of
three is not bad. And we have made some fine friends in just two
days. I am glad of the decision to call in at Tipuka River, this
beautiful haven among the mangroves.
We will sail at six in the morning.
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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