Maybe today?

0645 Wednesday and it's still packing in from the SW  but I think the front went through last night with heavy rain and lightning. Passage Weather.com says it's going to soften and shift to the north before the next one, which is building over Newfoundland and looks like a doozy. Due here in a week but I hope we'll be down near Madeira by then and south of the worst of it.

 

I now have a schoolkid's portugese dictionary, complete with little pictures of piglets (leitao but I don't know how to put the ^ on the a) and the like. Things make a lot more sense – especially the spelling – Dues cervejas should be Dois cervejas, for instance, which provides a bit of a handle on pronunciation and the local slur. Anyway, I've got a couple of magazines to translate on the way home. Some of it may stick.

 

So – the plan is still to leave on the tide this arve. And again, we'll dip the lids to Henry on his pedestal as we go past. Third Time Lucky, Carol! And Z is getting twitchy – too much fishe smelle.

 

I've done some notes on Lisbon for visiting yachties – here is a link that will last for 7 days or 100 downloads. https://www.yousendit.com/download/Z01Od0VEMGNUWUJFQlE9PQ

 I don't have the internet grunt here but perhaps some kind person out there could put it somewhere more permanent with a link sent to Berrimilla2@gmail.com so that Steve can add it to the blog. Thanks

 

 

OMDF - with deference to Kurtsy

The Portugese seem to favour the rather florid and pretentiously heroic in their statuary.

This guy is anything but – he's under a giant Moreton Bay fig in the Jardim de Estrela and I couldn't find anyone with enough English to tell me who he is. There's no inscription anywhere – perhaps google later. But to me he's the universal and humble mover of mountains, unsung and mostly forgotten by the florid and pretentious. He is dressed like an Australian but could be any worker anywhere. No seagulls for him.

 I took his photo on the 15 k walk to the dentist at Saldanha and back. Pete had a go at barber surgery on my stitch this morning and we decided that the tools at hand are not fine enough so up to the dentist again, where Dra Bruno removed it in a nanosecond.

 And the new wind generator has at last revved up enough to demonstrate its efficacy so, subject to major change in the forecast, we will wait for this little SW blow to soften and leave tomorrow afternoon on the tide. Cross em again please.

 For me, the usual inertia based partly on apprehension – but there will be yet another farewell coldie at the wharf Caff tomorrow and then into it. I won't really feel we're on our way until we are clear of Brazil and heading east.

Meantime, off to Pingos Doce to stock up on rather expensive snickers and mars bars. We've been a bit profligate here in the Doca. The dead fish seem to have evolved beyond the smelly stage so life is a bit easier.  

A bit of wisdom and a mini update

From Con and the Munster Rugby team over there in Crosshaven:

To the brave and faithful, nothing is impossible

And from my sister:

Maybe the Doca is thinking this about YOU..

 

"As we say in Athens, fishe and gestes in three dayes are stale".

 

1580 John Lyly from Euphues & his England II. 81 

 

If you are mystified, gestes has a hard g

Thanks to both of you!

We now have a new Airbreeze wind generator installed and it seems to be behaving, Thanks to Ketter at Southwest Windpower in Flagstaff and Sonia and Fernando at Telextronica here. We're going to watch it for a day and then, weather permitting get out of town. Been here way more than three dayes.

You makes your own luck - or not?

Stop yer whingeing, SisyFart. Looked at in any way but as a Conspiracy of Examiners,   we have been lucky.

 

The AirX died out there in the Bay of Biscay. Not off Tristan da Cunha. We were within easy sail of Lisbon and there's a Southwest Windpower agent here. Score 1.

 

My tooth went berserk after we got here – not out there in an Atlantic gale - and we were introduced to a local friend who kindly and competently pointed me at his own dentist and organised an appointment. And took us out to dinner. Twice. Thanks John! Score 2.

 

And the damper plate self destructed here in the Doca. Not out there in the ITCZ. Score 3.

 

And I can say Dues Cervejas in Portugese. Score 4 and onward.

 

And who knows what a 3 week delay might mean when we get down to 40 S. Score to be determined.

 

Been amusing myself with the tools of self justification – proverbs like 'Fools rush in…' or its opposite 'Fortune favours the brave' or even 'Carpe diem'. There's one for every circumstance. Anyone got any good suggestions for this pongy Doca? 'There but for the grace of God…' perhaps for you lot but what about us? Actually, I like the one in the Baez song about the juniper – 'there but for fortune go you or go I' meaning into gin soaked oblivion but it works in more devious ways.

 

Post them on Berrimilla2@gmail.com if you've nowt better to do. And thanks to everyone who have sent us messages and support. Fantastic and I'm trying to reply to you all as we go.

The engine lift, summarised

The first couple of times we lifted the donk, in Dutch Harbour and Falmouth, we had a chain hoist hanging from the boom above the aft end of the coachroof. There are photos on the /tng website if they haven't been corrupted by the bloody Viagra mob. The problem with this is that the hoist is angled forwards (towards the bow) as it passes around the coachroof coaming and down to the engine, so the lift is not vertical but pulling aft and hard against the coaming of the coachroof.

 

This means that to move the engine towards the bow to get it off its mounts and into the saloon, you must pull it against the backward pull of the hoist – tricky and a pain to do, with tackles everywhere and massive tension on them and having to ease the hoist at the same time.

 

So this time I pondered a bit and decided that a better way might be to use a couple of small tackles to suspend a bar, post, spinnaker pole or – in Berri's case – the jockey pole under the boom but inside the boat. To do this you do need a hatch somewhere in the coachroof, with one small tackle going up through it. The other end of the pole is suspended by the other tackle just aft of the coachroof. You need to be sure that the pole you use can support the weight of the donk from its centre while it is suspended from each end (I hope that makes sense). Berri's jockey pole is a hefty bit of tubing.

 

Then a 4 or better still 6 part tackle from the point of the pole directly above the suspension points on the donk gives you a vertical lift. Ever so much easier and you can get fine adjustments by playing with the two smaller tackles. It also allows you to tilt the pole slightly to assist the movement of the engine fore or aft once lifted. Worked like a dream. You can see most of the arrangement in the photos posted on the blog earlier. But here they are again

Sisyphus' shadow in the Doca

I'm told that Sisyphus achieved peace of mind by closing all thoughts of anything but the task at hand. And then got on with the job. I think we are a small jump ahead of him in that we stagger up the hill with our load of trivia but each time we get up there and roll back we have some small achievement ticked off that means that we don't roll back quite as far.

 

Dunno really. It's the hanging around that gets me. So I'm trying to learn Portugese, mostly by reading the newspapers which gives the words a bit of context. I need a dictionary and the place is closed for the long weekend…Reading it and getting the rough meaning is easy enough but understanding the rules of pronunciation and the way the locals slur the words is another ballgame altogether – it sounds like a sort of bastardised Russian. Little things…Dues cervejas …obrigado is a useful combination and I can pronounce it too.

 

The wind has changed – bliss! We were directly downwind of a fishing boat alongside the south wall with a pile of nets and dead fish on deck. It hasn't moved since we got here the first time and the fish are not just dead dead but gut curdling meltingly pustulating dead – the smell is probably stirring the great Prince Henry in his grave.

 

There he is in the top photo, at the head of his heroes, looking outwards to the world on a foggy Sunday. With the help of a Seagull. The next photo (with a large chunk of grot on the photoplate that must have been inside the Nik since I bought it) is one of the old schooners that sailed to the Grand Banks for cod – bacalhau in Portugese . The schooners carried up to 50 dories on deck, all stacked inside eachother – the third pic is  our smelly friend with his modern dory.

 

My internet access is now limited so doing these as word docs and pasting them into gmail when I have a connection. So they may lack a bit of structural integrity. Right now. waiting for Fernando to arrive with a new generator to see whether we can decide whether the problem is in the boat or the old generator.

 

Happy 50^th Gordie – all y'all please Consult on Oct 8^th. I think there will be a huge party in Falmouth. The final pic is a Gargoyle for Gordie – hasn't looked a day over 50 for 500 years – Go Gordie!

 

Apart from which, trivia reigns. Love youse all.

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