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..

Images on the run

This is the Torre de Belem about 5 k down river from the Doca de Alcantara. In the last one you can see the giant statue of Christ on the far side of the river. Taken with my phone, so quality dreadful. But a lovely morning for a run along the river front. Theres a sewer outfall along the way that has about a million mullet tightly packed around the outfall and there are thousands more in the doca too, along with our mate the jellyblobber who continues to push us all northwards.

Was a year ago almost at this exact time that we accepted a tow from Gordy and Dave C on the Madeline May off St Anthony's Head outside Falmouth after that rather nasty Atlantic crossing and the start of all these problems with the engine. But the real problem started when somehow I did not follow John's instructions when replacing the bell housing - not sure why or how we got it wrong but wrong  it is. John has despatched an aligning tool and a new damper plate from Sydney and we will lift the engine yet again to grt it sorted. Probably another week for all that if all goes well.

Wind generator part is also on its way and I think that will be sorted before the engine. Appendages firmly crossed on both. Meantime. we're in semi survival mode, living out of the supermarket, which we've finally found. It's only 300 metres away but really well hidden -  I found it eventually by following a trail of people with plastic shopping bags. And doing things a bit at a time and trying to get a look at Lisbon too. We have a doca temperature fridge for our small supply of beer, in a bucket 10 feet under water with the mullet and the blobbers. Definitely drinkable.

Link to the purpose of life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k62yQPdkwdQ

And the first contribution for the sreies - this one is Amundsen. So far all explorers, though Drake was really a pirate - and he's being reduced by a pigeon - but hey, I guess pigeon poo works just as well.

There's this big jellyfish

Oh the joy of being a highly developed blob of protoplasm with  a purpose. There's a metre long by half a metre wide jellyfish here in the Doca de Alcantara that has been gently pulsating its head (at least, its blunt end...) against the north wall of the Doca for the last three days or so. It wants to push Portugal into northern Europe and I'm sure it's really happy to be doing a great job. Photo later and maybe youtube.

Wish I could be quite so phlegmatic about life, the universe and everything at this moment! But at least one thing has gone right - just at the crucial moment last night, in the middle of crisis calls to Oz etc, this laptop expired. It loses its BIOS periodically, which is hugely frustrating because it then won't boot. But - bless his little heart, Paul Harry gave me a fix for the problem on a USB stick before we left Falmouth and I ran it and it worked. You Little Beauty Paul - may all your jellyfish come true!

And I'm going to abandon the other spammed blog with its priapic nonsense unless one of you geniuses out there can crack the password and remove all that grot.

Love youse all and I'm off ot join that jellyfish for an hour or two and encourage it to greater things.Peraps I can learn something about equanimity too.

Old farts don't weep - they just Consult...

Apologies for the long gap. Everything seemed to be going according to plan - wind gen removed, diagnosed, fix potentially under way (Thanks to Sonia at Telextronica) and big blog in my head about the joys and tribulations of Lisbon andthen -  the Examiner clobbered us with a dooozy. You may recall the saga as we replaced the shaft damper plate in England but it seems that the alignment problem is too big for the new plate to cope and it is hurling itself to pieces like the last one.  (thanks Golden Arrow - lovely job, even though it hasn't fixed the problem). So now we must pull the engine out again, and try to get it realigned properly. John W is sending a spigot re-aligning tool and a new plate from australia and I think I will try to fly the engineer down from Golden Arrow to actually do it so we know it will work.

The photo is a bit how I feel right now - and it is the second of what could be a fascinating series of the great, the gormless, the egotistical, the ungodly and the merely corporate brought down to their proper status by the doings of a seagull. Feel free to send your contributions to berrimilla2@gmail.com and perhaps Steve could put them in the blog as we go.  The only rule is that it must be a seagull (pigeons don't count) and it must be on the job. This one is Alfonso de Albuquerque and he joins the august original, Francis Drake. Keep 'em coming.

A Techie at the Doca

Alex phoned yesterday afternoon, and again this morning from Lisbon.
They are safely docked at the Doca de Alcantara which is just above
the suspension bridge in the centre of Lisbon. The internet caff is
some distance away and at the moment Alex hasn't located anywhere to
plug in the laptop. So the news is via Devon and as follows:
Before they decided to go in to Lisbon we managed, from the UK end, to
identify an agent for the generator located in Lisbon. The alternative
was Tenerife and there was no agent in Gibraltar. We phoned up the
Lisbon people to check that they could assist and they said they would
do all they could. We relayed this information to Berri and they
turned left.
I had talked to an extremely helpful woman in Lisbon who spoke
excellent English and she and a techie will be going down to the
Doca, at midday ish today, to take the unit away and check it over.
This means that Alex and Pete have had to dismantle the generator.
It also means that little is likely to happen over the weekend and
they will probably be in Lisbon until Monday or Tuesday. Alex will
update here as soon as he has time, locates an internet caff or a
Yacht Club with facilities, and remembers to take the right bits of
string with him.
Isabella

Lisbon

Just passing Ponta da Lage at the mouth of the Tejo - lovely day - berth arranged at the Doca d'Alcantera. More when we know.

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