Year 2- 25 August 2025 –Ruing -Flores

We woke at about 6.45 am and luckily not by the Aghan. We had some tea and breakfast and we enjoyed the view and it was already hot and likely to a hot day.

Tony and I then got on with trying to sort out the generator and I had taken the sides off the casing etc. We knew the problem was not the coolant as we had checked the radiator cap nor the water inlet as the filter was clear. It was not the belt as that looked good. We had looked up the likely causes which could be thermostat, impeller or water pump. I suspected the issue was the impeller so we took that out and two of the fins had vanished so this was part of the problem. The question was where had those bits gone. We took off the pipes around the impeller and could not find any bits. We then took the end off the heat exchanger (this is where the saltwater cools the coolant through a series of small pipes) and it had quite a bit of sediment and the anode was spent. We cleared this out and flushed water through it all. We then put it all back together with a new anode. We then put in a new impeller and put all pipes back. We then cleared up the mess and soaked up the water which had leaked out.

When we were ready we started the generator and quickly we could see a leak from the heat exchanger. We took the end off again and we had put an O ring the wrong side of the gasket. We reassembled again correctly and tightened and started again. We let the generator come up to temperature and she held at 165 degrees which is what she normally runs at and ran it for a bit. We had fixed it which was very satisfying but it made me think that I should check some of these things more regularly.  

We got the dinghy down and decided to go ashore and moored on the pier. There was a café called Café Ringo Ringo which offered cold Bintang Beer. There was a message about the Bintang which said, “Is colder than a kiss from your Ex!!”  We decided to try it and then had some lunch – noodles with squid and spicy chicken and some rice. We also spoke to the owner called One Wing who suggested a tour tomorrow to nearby villages, hot springs and fabric making which sounded interesting.

We walked on into the village and we were a little disappointed in comparison to the other villages we had visited. There was a lot of rubbish about and a sort of feeling there was little pride. We walked on and came across a number of shops which sold nothing really of interest to us. However, we did find an ATM which was helpful. We also came across a market where we bought some fruit and vegetables which was good.  The people were friendly but we did wonder why the rally was coming here. We walked back to pier and decided we would do the suggested tour tomorrow and will meet them at 8.30am. We returned to Stormbird and decided to go and do some snorkelling on the reefs nearby. We could not go too far in the dinghy and we went to two spots. The coral was not great and there were some fish but I guess we were too close to the harbour. It did not matter as we had a cooling dip.

We returned to Stormbird and had a sundowner on the rear deck whilst watching the sun go down. It had been a reasonable day but the main success was fixing the generator. We look forward to our tour tomorrow.

We had a left-over type of supper – chicken curry, red cabbage, aubergine melee and ouzo rice which felt good as we were using stuff up.

The picture of the day is Stormbird with the mountainous background of Flores in the harbour.

Need/Opportunity Year Three

In year three I will be going from Thailand to Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and then on to Chagos, Mauritius, Reunion, Cape Town, St Helena, Azores and back to the UK.  I am looking for crew from Mauritius/ Reunion Island to Cape Town and from Cape Town to the UK. If of any interest do email me.

The blog will continue as we continue the journey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog then do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com