Filtering fuel and getting more.
15 September 2015 | Hellville, Nosy Be. Madagascar
Bill/storm is coming
With the fun we had yesterday getting our poor dinghy filled with water and sand, we set about getting the gasoline in the fuel tank inspected and filtered. We'd done a pretty decent job getting poor Puff cleaned of sand but there was still some that needed cleaning out. We got that taken care of first as we lifted her off the deck to get her in the water.
We grabbed our spare gas can and our Baja filter(separates water from gas or diesel when it's poured through it)and started in on filtering the fuel. Out of one tank and into the other back and forth several times till we felt comfortable with it's clarity. The first filtering showed some gunk in the glass jar we poured the last of the filtered fuel into. By the third filtering, the fuel looked just fine. We added another gallon of new clean fuel to the out boards tank just to make sure it had some really good fuel in with the old fuel. Once that was done, we put the fuel tank in Puff and the outboard started up on the first pull of the cord and has worked fine throughout the rest of the day.
Once we were done with that, we pulled out our old "storm sail" to run it up the forestay. It may have been made back in 1982, but it's never been used from the look of it. For all intense and purposes, it's a brand new sail. We loaned our regular forestaysail to Warren and Maria on Night Fly as the had lost the use of their genoa when their roller furling blew apart on the trip here. It should help them during the next trip to South Africa. Since we had a spare sail, though smaller, we had no problem loaning it out. In the past, when we used our forestaysail, it had a nasty problem with a piece on the mast making cuts in the halyard. I'd filed down the area I thought was making the cuts and wrapped heavy duty tape(like duct take on steroids)around the affected area. It's been fine since but since this sail is smaller, I needed to go up the mast to see where I'd need to wrap a new piece of tape. No big deal as the waters around Hellville have been relatively calm. While up the mast, I also checked the "steaming"light. It's a light that is supposed to be on if you are running your engine and not really sailing. We found it had stopped working last night when we were coming back to Hellville from Nosy Komba. It ended up being a bad bulb and now I have to find my spare. It's here somewhere.
After a quick lunch, I took off for shore with our diesel and gasoline jugs for one last fill up. We'd used three tanks of gasoline during our time in the Maldives and Seychelles. Gas, as well as diesel is cheaper here so I'd waited to get the jugs all filed. Diesel is $1.35 per gallon cheaper here than back in the Seychelles. About an hour later, "Cool" showed up with all the tanks filled. After paying him as well as Jimmy(boss)their fee, I returned to Zephyr stopping off at Sage, one of our cruising friends that had just arrived. They gotten thrown around like we had during their trip down from the Seychelles and the movement had stirred up some sediment on the bottom of their diesel tanks. That had then clogged up their filtration system and had then fouled up their engine. I've got some extra filters stuck away so we should be able to help get them up and running again. They had sailed into the anchorage about 1100.
We've made a list of things we need to get done before we set off early next week. Now that we are back in Hellville, we expect to get most of them done. The plan is to checkout on Friday and take off for Russian Bay for a day or two till the weather is good for the trip down the coast. Several boat are planning on doing the same thing. We could have quite a group going south together next week.