Oh yeah ... Honolulu.
Where am I now? Oh yeah, still in Honolulu.
Long story short: Finally managed to get the new Auto-pilot installed (myself) and went into the commissioning routine. All goes well until the 'sea trial' calibration sequence. This involves sailing in circles until the computer figures out which way the flux-gate compass is pointing (in a manner of speaking) and then some other manoeuvres. After several run-throughs, the computer clearly isn't talking to the compass, and I eventually get an error message saying "Rate-gyro FAIL". I had no idea what it meant , but it obviously wasn't good.
Returned to the berth, called Raymarine. "It can't be reset, you'll have to return the unit to us under warranty". Again with the warranty game? And another $75 that I have to pay just to send it to them.
After my first experience with the local Raymarine agent, (it took about 5 weeks and several phone calls to get my 'old' auto-pilot back; he lost my paperwork, then tried to bill me for a warranty job, and so on) I bypassed him and sent the unit straight to Raymarine. So now I'm waiting. Again. Some more. UPS' tracking system says Raymarine received it on Friday. Today is Monday. If it isn't back by Friday I'll have to use my grumpy voice when I call them.
Lots of little 'to-do' items crossed of the list, so that's great. But, I'm over this 'stuck in paradise' thing. As soon as the core-pack gets back I'll re-install it (easy job, half an hour to plug it back in) do the calibration/commissioning thing, then a day of trials and I'm out of here. Auto-pilot or not. I sailed for 20 days without one to get here, I'll sail 40 days without one to get home.
Putting that aside, today was interesting. When I had been here for about two weeks, I did a brief sail, testing some repairs or something, and the 'speedo' wasn't working at first, then came good after half an hour of sailing. Then the night of Tsunami alert (did I tell you about the Tsunami alert? Oh dear, my poor neglected blog) the speed instrument read zero all night. Seemed a bit odd that it had grown enough weed to clog up the sender unit so quickly, but that was clearly the problem. So all I had to do was remove the transducer from it socket, (which is to say: "unplug a hole in the bottom of the boat". What could go wrong? ) put in the temporary plug and clean the speed transducer. No, there wasn't any drama with removing the unit and putting the 'plug in'. Sorry to disappoint. That process was in fact surprisingly straightforward. Given that it meant that I had a 2 inch (5cm) hole open in the bottom of the boat I expected a flood. Obviously there was some 'ingress', but it wasn't as violent or pressurised as I expected.
What was interesting, well, to me anyway, was that when I looked a the unit closely, I couldn't see all that much 'weed' growth on it. Some, sure, but not clogging levels. I shrugged and cleaned off what I could I could see. But the little wheel that spins to create the speed signal wasn't free. "Okies, some of the weed must have migrated up into the cavity at the top of the wheel" I figured, and got out a little scaper/probe thing and went to work. Lots of stuff coming out, and I thought:"that doesn't look like plant material, what ..."
Apparently a colony of marine worms had decided that this would be a good place to occupy. Weird, or what? I guess this is why our quarantine people are a) fussy, and b) losing. If I hadn't bothered to fix it, I would clearly have imported this little colony (which may already be present in Australia, but that's not the point) of worms into Australian waters. And no inspection would have detected them.
Environmental disaster averted.
So, about that Tsunami. To save me telling the whole story over again. I'll just paste my Failbook post from the following day.
Well that was something different to fill in a
Saturday night. About 7.30 some (really loud!) sirens went off. Asked
the locals what the alarm was about and was told it was the Tsunami
alert.
After much consultation and seeking of local advice, me
and about a third of the boats in the various local harbours put out
sea, as theory has it that it's safer in deep water. That's the theory
anyway. Having
a couple of hundred
leisure craft suddenly heading out of 3 different harbours, and being
joined by several Navy vessels, commercial fishing boats, and so on was
probably the most dangerous aspect as it turned out. Remember this was
Saturday night, so a number of the skippers and crew had probably been
having drinks earlier. There was certainly some interesting radio
traffic.
I wasn't really sure the locals were taking it
seriously (and thus if I needed to) until an empty bulk tanker moved out
of the main port. Then I figured if someone was willing to spend the
thousands of dollars that would have cost, perhaps they are. (The Navy
moving out didn't convince me, as I figured it was just as likely that
some Admiral thought it was be a good drill regardless of the Tsunami.)
Anyhoo ... in the end it was all for nought. I *think* I saw the
'tsunami' roll by, it was so small I can't be sure. Then we had to mill
around for hours before the harbours were declared 'open' again by the
emergency management people. I gave up and dropped anchor off Waikiki
beach and went to sleep.
So, there it is. I can now add "Rode out a tsunami at sea" to my CV.
Okies, that was the interesting part of being here. Seriously but, I'm outta here next weekend, or there'll be tears!
W.
