Adventures of Orcinius

11 September 2015 | HOME - Vancouver WA
24 August 2015 | 46 11.4'N:123 51.4'W, Port of Astoria Marina
22 August 2015 | 46 42.0'N:132 09,4'W, 330 West of CR Bouy, Astoria
21 August 2015 | 46 41.8'N:136 13.8'W, 500 West of Astoria
20 August 2015 | 46 22.82'N:140 28.00'W, East end of High
20 August 2015 | 46 22.80'N:140 28.32'W, Middle of High Same as Fish
20 August 2015 | 46 22.79'N:140 28.57'W, Middle of High
20 August 2015 | 46 22.7'N:140 30.2'W, 675 Miles West of CR
20 August 2015 | 45 57.6'N:144 54.0'W, East End of the High
18 August 2015 | 44 38.2'N:147 57.0'W, 1000 NM to Astoria
18 August 2015 | 43 31.0'N:150 28.0'W, 1126 NM to Astoria
17 August 2015 | 41 40.1'N:153 00.1'W, 1200 miles West of Astoria
16 August 2015 | 39 30.1'N:154 53.1'W, West end of the North Pacific High
15 August 2015 | 37 34.5'N:156 00.0'W, 1011 North of Oahu
15 August 2015 | 37 04.5'N:156 23.0'W, 983 North of Oahu
14 August 2015 | 34 12.3'N:157 26.1'W, 800 North of Oahu
13 August 2015 | 31 50.0'N:158 06.5'W, 650 North of Oahu
12 August 2015 | 29 02.0'N:158 51.0'W, 330 North of Oahu
11 August 2015 | 26 32.0'N:158 59.0'W, 330 North of Oahu
09 August 2015 | 23 44.1'N:158 49.4'W, 140 N of Oahu

Palmerston Technical

26 August 2012 | 18 02.0'S:163 11.6'W, Palmerston Island
John
Palmerston is a beautiful Atoll with a very large lagoon and four motus at each of the corners. So that is all I get to say about the pretty stuff and on with the technical.

It never fails. We arrived in the morning on Tuesday the 21st of August. We have problems with our two main diesel engines and neither are the same. One I can fix with spare parts on the boat and the other I need parts shipped to me to fix. Being in Palmerston is very isolated. If yachties as we are called don't bring the goods to them then they have to wait for 3 to 6 months for a ship from Rarotonga to stop by. Things get lost in shipping very easily when there isn't a regular delivery. No airport here so FedEx is out of the question. Even if they do order something it may still take a year to get unless a yachtie brings it. That is what Lisa and I did with our cargo we brought from Raro. That means that the engine I need parts for wonÂ't be fixed here. The worst is not the food but spare parts for ?????? Each household has between 5 and 10 freezers so most are not short of food stores and Fish is their main course diet which is plentiful with chicken as the Sunday main meal because they are running around all over the place. Back to the spare parts.... none to be had on the island, not even for their own needs. A good example... they have an Island generator they run 12 hours a day, six in the AM and six in the PM. The generator runs on diesel and they generally get diesel shipped in the two times the ship shows up. Their genset needs an overhaul but there are two things they don't have here, first is the rebuild parts and second is a machine shop. The job cannot be done without a floating machine shop stopping by with the rebuilding parts to do it. That won't happen in the near future but there is a new-to-Palmerston generator sitting in Rarotonga waiting for delivery to replace the one that needs rebuilding. Oh and the reason the generator is not run 18 or 24 hours a day is because they don't have enough motor oil or diesel to run it that many hours. So they compound the problem. The generator needs to run a sufficient amount of time to keep all the household's freezers running long enou gh to keep everything frozen. Twelve on and twelve off is barely sufficient. So to ensure their freezers stay frozen, each household has purchased a small gas powered generator and connected it to their houses. Now this is the beginning of a new problem called gasoline or petrol purchase, shipping and storage. They barely had enough to run their outboard motors for fishing and now they need more for the generators.

If the community had a sufficient number of diesel generators, i.e. two, they could rotate through the service to operate 24/7 it would be considerably more efficient than each household buying and storing gasoline to operate their personal generators. The community could purchase diesel at a much lower rate as a single unity compared to each person purchasing petrol at an individual rate. Up until a few years ago they have only been purchasing Petrol for their boats they use for fishing and ferrying yachties two and from their homes. Over the last couple of days I have met a few individuals that work for the administration keeping the facilities and equipment running. The generator is the example. Yachties coming through Palmerston have all kinds of experience. The Palmerstanians don't have a list of things that need to be fixed so by the time the Yachties are ready to depart is when they finally discover their talents that could have been used. We have lunch at the administration building one day with our host Tere. We get to meet his crew and eventually over the next couple of days they discover I have some untapped knowledge and of course resources. Remember the generator? It leaks oil faster than they can put it in. Mostly because of the loose valve cover nuts. They asked, and I in turn asked all the yachts on moorings but no 5/16 fine nuts were to be had. I have a bolt the same size as the ones for the studs on the valve covers.... I take the bolt back to our boat and get out my JB Weld pu tty stick, the Steel version and lop off 3/8" of it and kneed it to an even color. Once at an even color I wrapped it around the bolt and created a nut. Once hardened it worked on the valve covers. I took the home made JB Weld nut to one of the guys at the administration and explained how I did it and followed up with giving him the rest of the putty stick. He said he would make up the other 5 nuts and try to get the manager to order some more of the wonder putty.

Each yachtie anchored at Palmerston is sponsored and it is quite territorial. What that means is a sponsor has so much pride in his duties to sponsor a yacht that they sometimes get a bit offended when other families get some graft from the yacht that they are sponsoring. IÂ'll save the sponsorship issue for another time but suffice to say it does create some problems. Diving is restricted.... however, if you are doing something for Palmerston it is OK... Lisa and I wanted to go diving on the outside of the reef. We were permitted to do that if we would do something for Palmerston. That was report back on the health of the coral and the structural soundness of the moorings. We agreed and Tere decided to join us at the surface in his aluminum boat. Once we committed and were going to dive the next day, he said he used to have two moorings but one was torn loose and it would be nice to see if it was still partially there. We hit the water around 11 the next day and dove our own mooring to check its security. It was good so moved on to the spot where he lost one. We found it, the chain was intact but the mooring rope line was gone. I had 150 feet of 5/8" line I had given to him and his cousin Ed so we used part of that line and his floats to make a new mooring line. Charisma is on it today.

After that we headed Northeast to check out the other moorings for Ed. They were all pretty good but could not get to all of them before running out of air. We gave Ed a report on all of his moorings and what he needed to do. He was quite thankful as was Tere. Most of these guys are hard workers but they also smoke. Ed is younger than I by about 8 years but he cannot free dive as deep or as long as I can. My free diving has improved immensely over the past 3 months and especially since I quit smoking cigars. I can get down to 20 meter, do some work for 15-30 seconds and float back to the surface comfortably. Ed cannot get below about 3-4 meters and must turn around and come back to the surface. The reason I say all this is because they cannot maintain their own moorings. They cannot free dive and they have no SCUBA gear to work it. They wait for Yachties to dive their anchors or mooring connections to see what need to be done. Yachties be ware.

The mooring field is fairly large and has 7 fixed moorings owned by Ed and Tere. They used to have 8 but one went missing. If more than 7 boats show up the overload needs to go on anchor. This atoll is no different than the rest. By that I mean you sail up to it in 2-3 mile deep water and then there is the reef shelf built up of coral. The coral then tapers up to the rim for about 50 to 200 yards. In some cases the coral heads are separated by some distance and there is sand between them. That doesnÂ't apply here so this anchorage is considered an anchor eater. There are deep holes in the coral bed that your anchor can fall through and never be retrieved without scuba gear. All boats are advised to set an anchor even if on a mooring. However if on a mooring you drop your anchor just until it is above the surface of the coral. If your mooring breaks free and the wind is blowing you towards the coral lip then you will hear the anchor hit the bottom with great noise and i t will most likely stop you from being a casualty. If you happen to be blown away then you most likely will awake the next morning several miles away from the atoll with no damage but a big surprise.

One of the yachts was preparing to leave last night when he discovered his anchor was fouled on the bottom and could not get it loose. He is one who didnÂ't follow the rules of dangling the anchor above the coral and let it go to the bottom. The wind picked up over night and this morning he has a damaged bow pulpit anchor roller from the chain jerking against a coral head. I am the only one with scuba gear so I will go and help retrieve his chain and anchor. Although he wanted to leave last night I wasnÂ't going to dive the anchor in the dark. By the way, this guy flew a Canadian flag but I believe he was originally from Hungary but canÂ't be certain. Anyway, yesterday and the day before he had absolutely nothing good to say about America or Americans. It was all our fault no matter what because we didnÂ't turn the other cheek. After listening to him on three different occasions and getting up and walking away each time I had had it. So after Bob and I were finished bein g nice guy Americans because that is who we are, I let him have it. It was only a small audience, Bob from Charisma, Simon and David from BobÂ's sponsor family. All who listened to him on Palmerston had had it with him but I was the only one to correct his attitude. Tere, our sponsor, had a problem with his four wheeler he uses to haul things from the barge to the administration and home. I found a broken wire and replaced the spade connector and then re-wired his external battery with sufficient sized wire that it fires right up. He is very happy that I was able to fix it.

Now for my problems. My port engine seems to be having a problem with oil pressure. After running it for several hours it may show low oil pressure through the idiot light and cause an alarm or if we have been running it at our normal 2300 rpm then slow it down the alarm for low oil pressure goes off. I added gauges to the system and the oil pressure shows 15-20 on the port engine and 20-22 on the starboard. So I have a feeling my oil pressure pump is going bad on the port engine. As far as the starboard engine, when we approached Palmerston I noticed the alternator was not charging. I took it apart and there were two problems. First the terminal was loose for the battery wire and when I removed it and then removed the alternator the alternator bracket broke in my hand. Any other place the broken bracket would make the engine temporarily terminal other than very short runs because there would not be a belt to run the water pump. Here I begged and borrowed a small weld er to repair the bracket. Tried to remove the bracket completely but it was part of the motor mount and I couldnÂ't break the bolts loose so had to weld in place. The next challenge was to get 220vac out of the generator to run the European welding machine. The whole process took me about 8 hours to accomplish over two days. Tightened all the wire studs on the alternator, installed it on the repaired bracket and she works great.

I know this is a big blog but it is only half because Lisa has the other in the next blog segment.
Comments
Vessel Name: ORCINIUS
Vessel Make/Model: Lagoon 440
Hailing Port: Vancouver, Washington
Crew: John LeDoux & Lisa Danger
About:
Sailing since the mid 90's. Prior to this trip, 4 sailing adventures from Vancouver WA to the San Juan and Gulf Islands in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Bought ORCINIUS in West Palm Beach Fl in April 2010. Sailed her South through the Panama Canal and back up the West coast to home port. [...]
Extra: Lisa is the real captain. I have never been at the helm when docking or anchoring, she has a great touch to docking.
Home Page: www.orcinius.com

Who: John LeDoux & Lisa Danger
Port: Vancouver, Washington