The state of play

So – where we are at. A hot humid Saturday morning in Lisbon and we will be here at least until Monday but more likely Tuesday. Fernando arrived in the throes of a seemingly terminal attack of the flu + bronchitis + you name it and we set up a ladder against the backstay and ran the Air X with a drill to simulate wind. No charge indicated by the Xantrex although the AirX LED said it was charging. No obvious reason except perhaps the new PCB incompatible somehow with something in the boat – the unit worked under test in the lab.

 

So – dismantle it all over again – tools resurrected from the bowels where they are screwed down under bunkboards for the ocean voyage that wasn't. Unit back to lab. Monday Public Holiday but Sonia and Fernando will work anyway to get us going. Service! That is, if poor Fernando survives that long – I told him to go home to bed.

 

The good news – yep, there is some! I wrote a polite note, quite a long one for me, to the Sales Manager Europe for Southwest Windpower (the manufacturers of the Air series) who lives in Flagstaff, Arizona (always wanted to go there!) and she came back almost immediately with the offer of a new one. The complication is that Telextronica only have the slightly less rugged newer model in stock – meant for these latitudes and not really the Southern Ocean. Anyway, I'm even more impressed with Southwest Windpower. Not only do they make superb gear, seems they also look after you if you can get in contact.

 

I think our best outcome from all this would be to get the old unit fixed and re-installed and to leave with a new one, even if a bit less grunty, in a box somewhere in Berri's nethers, just in case. The new model, called Air Breeze is rated to survive at 110 mph or about 70 kts. Marginal for the Southern Ocean but we can always tie it off.

 

But full marks to Telextronica and Southwest.

A burst of trivia to follow if I have enough left on this link

What was all that guff about threads of equanimity?

Off we went, out through the swing bridge at the end of the dock and 180 starboard into the Tagus. 15 knots of wind right on the nose but no movimento from the wind generator's whizzer. It ought to turn at that windspeed, even with the engine running but it should stop itself charging the battery. So 180 port, back to the end of the mole, another 180 port and back in the queue for the swing bridge. Here we are, back in berth 825 and the techie will be here in the morning.

Probably only a small adjustment needed but best done by the expert.

So Henry's Sagres is in consultative mode and we ain't weeping. Yet!

We'll keep you posted...

Final shore based coldie

The weather not brill for the next week - light to moderate headwinds - but we're going to go. This may be the last from gmail for a while. Odd feeling having a last coldie at the caff on the wharf with perhaps two months minimum at sea to come...

We'll have a somewhat warmer drop of Sagres as we pass Henry and his mates. Sagres is local beer and also the place where he lived and watched for his ships to come home.

Cross 'em please - I think we're off.

IDA

or Infante Dom Anrique and the monument to the sailors who made the voyages.

And the world map in the Maritime Museum with the C15 voyages

Unfortunately, I stuffed up the technology and the photo of Pete doing his laundry, Lisbon style - treading it in a bin full of fresh water and Fairy liquid on the pontoon - wont download as a video or a photo.

Off again?

So much to write and so little time. Lisbon has been at one level fascinating - an amazing city with such a history. And at another level just one little - or huge frustration after another and the only way forward is to hang on the the threads of equanimity and patience and just keep on pushing. We think we are ready to go - with an untested repair to the wind generator - but Telextronica is confident so we'll go.

And we will sail down the Tagus in the wake of a line of truly legendary sailors who departed from here not knowing where they were going, fully aware that their chances of returning were minimal, in boats that today look primitive, with all the superstition and fear of their religious age. We will pass the monument to Prince Henry the Navigator and salute them all.

Thence we will head towards Madeira. We will be back on sailmail from about 1400 UTC today so messages via Berrimilla2@gmail.com please.

Carol, thanks for good wishes and yep - we'll dip our lids.

Love yose all.

Is there a tooth fairy out there - or a generous seagull?

The second round with Dra. Bruno will be, I hope, the last. We decided that the tooth had to go and now I have my old friend in a little blue plastic box just in case there's an errant tooth fairy near the Doca. She's a brilliant extractor - I got none of the crunching I expected from previous eperience - but some reassuring scraping around the bony edges of the hole to clear the infection - reassuring but spine creepy. I'm dosed to the eyebrows with amoxycillin - it was a really big infection - and I have a stitch that has to be removed in 8 days. So, being a prudent old fart, I bought tweezers and sharp scissors on the walk back to the boat so that Pete can act as barber surgeon. Swiss army knife and pliers might be a bit cumbersome. I have a cd of all the xrays - isn't technology wonderful?

Which means that we could leave on the next tide, but we won't. We are having dinner at what looks like a cool establishment tomorrow evening with local friend who organised the dentist for me and we might then leave on the midday tide on Friday. Carol, yep - B2 @ gmail from then on. But I think more likely midday Saturday.

Have been passing prescribed cold ale over wound and watching extraordinary fog roll up the Tagus. Wind blowing directly up the river, fog rolling in with it, completely obscured bridge and Christ statue in minutes but seems only over river. Significant drop in temperature. Instant foghoonery from the river traffic.  Assume a temperature inversion but not sure. Will google later. Condensation dripping off rig and other elevated bits of Berri.

Story of engine lift if I can gt it together before we leave, else perhaps by instalment via sailmail. Must eat, dose some more and sleep - the decrepitude creeps on...

Zarquon

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=zarquon

 

Great job  with the engine.

 

Chas

Thanks Charles! Engine now all re-connected, I hope, and sounds good. Everything seems to work as originally intended and I've just put in the last 4 tiny screws that secure the hinges of the engine box. Thanks to all of you with acheing appendages - time to relax them a bit until Sunday, when we will leave, AGW.

Second round with Dra. Bruno this afternoon and with luck the final stoush at 10.00 aturday. Meantime, putting the boat back together and a bit of exploring - I'm off to the National Archives tomorrow if I can work the subway system. That's where the remaining records of the C15 voyages are kept - all that's left after the 1755 fire and earthquake.

 

Thanks for all your messages on B2 gmail - I cant get to them at the mo because my link is misbehaving so I'll send this and hope it goes.

Now for the Daily Examiner

Biggish couple of days. Re-installed the wind generator yesterday evening with Mr Fernando from Telextronica - still not enugh wind to turn the thing but he's confident.

And the parts eventually emerged from customs midday today and we took the whole thing apart, lifted the engine, re-aligned the bellhousing, changed gearboxes and reassembled it all. I'm covered in bruises around the chest and ribs and cuts all over my hands from the pointy bits of hose clips but - Daily Examiner permitting - it's done except for a bit of minor connection tomorrow. I'll try to write the story in a bit more detail in case anyone else ever wants to do it and put it on the blog somewhere. We worked out a different way of lifting the engine this time and it worked much better. Still not easy.

Massive bearhug for John Witchard (Witchard Marine Diesel in Sydney) for putting together the realignment tool and all the allen keys and bolts and instructions. It all worked , John - about  a 6 hour job and full of beartraps but it's now the third time I've done it (I think...)and all the beartraps are new ones. How can this be? Anyway, great job mate!

Photos - top down

Engine lifted, rotated and swinging in the breeze and the wash of the go fast plastic mob
Shredded neoprene damping material
New lift technology - explanation follows if I can get it together
Christ on the other side of the river - he's about 2 miles away - too far to monitor the comments of the local seagulls. But anyway, he's probably got a tefln haircut...


Been trying to remember all evening the name of the mob at the Resturant at the end of the Universe who were waiting for their prophet and he arrived too late for the his own sermon. The followers of Zarkon perhaps

Yamba says it all and another Seagull

A message from someone who understands how it feels over here sometimes!

Alex

Just been for a drive from Brisbane down to Coffs over a few days.

You may be interested to know that the local paper in Yamba is called "The Daily Examiner"

Tough task master on a regular basis?

Nev

Thanks Nev.

The engine parts should be delivered today so now to the painful bit - getting it all disconnected and lifted out. Appendages everywhere in the crossed position please, and Consultations at the ready, vibes teleported and all that jazz. We'll keep ya posted.

The Seagull in the photo gets an honourable mention - I spotted it from the battlements of the Castelo San Jorge about half a mile away and the full length of the Nik's telephoto just brought it in. I went looking for the statue afterwards but the Seagull had done its work and moved elsewhere so no close up. The statue is of Dom Joao 1, King of Portugal, fully armour plated and heroically poised to do battle.

Roight - to the business of the day...

Missing ship

On matters gnasherous, the oxycodone ibuprofen recipe sorted the pain in one dose - remarkable - so I now have a very swollen face and a dull ache but am  reasonably confident that it will all work - Wednesday will be the cruncher, so to speak.

We hope to get the wind generator re-installed to day and the first box ticked. But not looking frward to the engine job - I know just what a pita it is.

Sue - got all your stuff - erk! - will reply shortly. Z ok.

A few pics from Pete

 In order from the top

The mighty Victory - Intergalactic workboat champion.
Wave
One of many ships that passed very close
Jellyblobber for the moon
A Lymington Scow exactly like the one I learned to sail in, probably built in Christchurch - this one was in the Institutiao Navale at Belem and had been used by the Portugese Navy for sail training. I'd love to take her sailing...
Farewell deputation - l-r - Pauline & Paul Harry, Gordon Howells, David Carne, Isabella W, Huw Fernie and Graham Barrett.

The hard stuff made easy

Once upon a time in what seems like another life altogether, I was delivering a Safety and Sea Survival course with Gerry Fitz. One of the students was a medical Doctor who was working in the casualty department of one of Sydney's busiest inner city hospitals. I asked her if she would review the standard list of contents for a first aid kit in the light of new drugs and develping techniques. She agreed - bravely, I thought, given the liability issues involved and the increasingly litigious bent of the yachting mob. She gave us a table of suggested contents based on the absolute requirements of the IRC regulations for Category 0 and 1 yacht races plus her own suggested additions and a table of the sorts of problem your average yacht crew might meet while doing what they do. She and Donna then worked it so that the table is set out with a column for the problem - say Severe Pain - another for the appropriate treatment, then the brand names of a list of drugs to administer - Oxycodone, Endone etc , followed by likely side effects and any other useful information. It's all set out so that it can be laminated and put in the first aid kit or kept in the boat's information file. All very sensible and really easy to use under pressure.

My little burst of prescience about the pain getting really really bad in yesterday's blog came true with knobs on - I won't bore you with descriptions but the rhinocerous pills (paracetamol, 1g) coupled with Pete's special Aubergine painkillers (ditto but with codeine dihydrate, I think) didn't even begin to dent it. So in the depths of the night, I dug out the boat's box of goodies looking for a magic bullet. Oxycodone seemed the thing but I was also full of paracetamol and codeine and was not sure whether I could drop oxycodone on top of all that. So to the table and there it says, loud and clear for oxycodone - administer with paracetamol and/or ibrupofen - yay! exactly what I needed to know.

My profound thanks, Dr. G (the human version) and Donna for an elegant and effective reference kit. The recipe is working and now I will start cutting back on the dose...

Trivia and other stuff.

A stay of execution.

What I had confidently expected to be a routine extraction by the Gnasher Trasher turned out to be anything but.The amazingly competent Dr Bruno decided a rearguard action to save the tooth was worth a try and she blasted her way down into the murky and massively infected depths of my jaw with a variety of tools that would look good in a mining camp and allowed me to smell the resultant goo. Not nice. But she reckons that it should be ok - another visit on Wednesday to huck out some more grot and put in another dressing and then a new root canal job on Saturday. All going well by that stage, I'll get to keep the tooth. As I think we would have been stuck here at least until Wednesday anyway, it's not too big a delay and worth the chance.

But no sixpence under the pillow. And it hurts! She gave me some rhinocerous sized painkiller pills that I'm reluctant to try this early in the piece in case it gets really really bad - and anyway, they mght interfere with other medicinal compounds. I think that this evening we might consider broaching Pete Goss' very generously donated bottle of the mighty Talisker for a small celebratory and anaesthetic tot.

So we'll be here for another week. Not the worst place in the world to be marooned.

Wittering

One for the collection but a bit tricky. A mere blogger should never presume to comment on what appears to be a national monument so I will leave it to the seagull - who is, after all a local and therefore up with the cultural nuances - seems to me to be a comment on ostentatious sentimentality but, unfortunately, the seagull was too far away to ask.

So how to stay interesting while marooned in lovely Lisbon? Dunno really - I'll just witter on and see how the list of followers fluctuates.

The pedestrian bits of Lisbon are cobbled with gerzillions and gerzillions of squareish 100mm ish stones, all worn smooth by possibly hundreds of years of feet (htat sounds like one of those exam howlers) I think they are marble but Pete thinks they are too hard to be marble. Dunno but a dollar for each stone might just solve the world crisis.

Toothwright being organised for next week - time, I think to say farewell to an old friend, And the wind generator parts have arrived so there is some progress

Eeyore again

The spares have arrived at Lisbon airport but - isn't there alway a but? - Customs are on strike till Monday and then they start on the backlog.

That's just what WOULD happen, said Eeyore.

Progress

I have found a kind man in an engineering shop on the waterfront who will lend us his (huge!) chainhoist so now we wait for the parts to arrive, then unpack Berri's interior to make room for the engine, disconnect the engine from fuel, water, shaft, battery and controls (job for jockey sized contortionist...), attach chainhoist to the boom and lift - not easy as the hoist must negotiate the back of the coachroof so not a direct lift - then turn the engine around in the cabin, remove the gearbox and bellhousing and follow John's instructions. A relatively simple job in ideal conditions but a touch on the tricky side here.

And I think I need a dentist - one of those times when local knowledge is useful. We have been offered local help by a generous relative of one of our long time followers and I think this might be the time to invoke it.

Our friend the jellyblobber has even greater ambitions - he's now trying to reach the moon but, I fear, his stage 1 lacks the thrust of a Saturn rocket and he's just able to get his blunt end to break the surface. A different version, perhaps, of the more athletic Cowi in the nursery rhyme.

Meantime, I'm going on a seagull hunt - the place is full of statues of the great and the gormless...

ll

The Archangel Raphael

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ouIQkH_Jn8

This statue sailed with Vasco da Gama to India and on all his later voyages. It is beautifully carved, serene and lovely and I wish it could talk to me. See the photo for a description. It is in the Maritime Museum in Lisbon and will be for me a special visit if ever I come here again - like Harrison's clocks in the Greenwich Museum.

The boat is a replica caravel that is on the jetty close to us here in the Doca de A and similar to da Gama's ships that the statue sailed on. Da Gama's ship on the voyage to India was the San Raphael. She was a 'nau' or ship of the line and a bit bigger and square rigged.

Another socially conscious seagull

This is Robert Falcon Scott with thanks to someone whose email address I don't recognise - but thanks anyway! All explorers so far - perhaps it's the seagulls?

And some eyes for Isabella http://www.isabellawhitworth.co.uk/.

More good work by seagulls

Matthew Flinders and James Cook with thanks to Nigel - and thanks to Caroline for Amundsen, who, on further inspection, really is under a seagull. And SteveJ suggested we harness the jellyblobber and get a tow back to Sydney. Neat idea - stand by for the sleigh ride!

Google Earth Placemark: Doca de Alcantara.kmz

Just for fun. It's an old photomap - there's lots more building north
of the railway, including the well hidden supermarket. The container
terminal and huge cruise ship terminal are along the outside of mole
forming the south side of the Doca and there's a replica caravel east
of us on the dock wall. Photos later - but what the early sailors
achieved in those vessels is, to anyone who understands the sea,
absolutely astonishing..