Year 2 -30 June 2025 – Breakwater Marina- Townsville- A few -More Jobs

It was a cool morning when we woke and we had breakfast. The technician (Ethan) was supposed to come first thing but did not arrive until 9.00am. He assessed the situation relating to the freezer but had brought little equipment with him. He had brought a man called Ben who deals with leaks and we showed him the leaking inlet for the generator and he said he can fix it. Ethan agreed to take the pipes off for him. Ethan then left saying he had to go and get a number of things and he would be back in an hour. Frustratingly this turned into 2.5 hours.

When he returned he first looked at the freezer but after some time his conclusion was that there was a blockage around the plate and he could not fix it and it may take days to get a replacement. This was very frustrating and I may therefore have to get it looked at in Cairns. He suggested that I buy a portable electric freezer which does not take too much power. My thoughts were that it will not be easy without a freezer and how annoying since the system was new last year. Mark was not sure whether he thought Ethan was an expert on freezers.

Ethan did put the new stantion I brought from the UK and did repair the SSB aerial and sort out the split pins which had not been bent over as they had to remove the backstay to get Stormbird lifted out the water. He left about 3.00pm. Mark and I managed to borrow the courtesy car and went to BCF and looked at the portable freezers. The problem is space and where to put it. They are also not cheap and finally they use about 3amps which over 24 hours is quite a lot. I decided to think about it.

We returned to Stormbird and packed everything away. I looked up fridge engineers in Cairns and will call them in the morning. We will have to vary our provisioning so that we can buy more tins, lentils and other such things and hopefully we can catch some fish. We shall survive.

William and Nicola Mackaness, our next crew to arrive messaged to say they had left Doha and were on their way to Brisbane. Mark and I decided to go out for a curry to Marsala in Palmer Street. It was very tasty and it seems like ages since I have had a curry. William & Nicola confirmed they had reached Brisbane and they flight to Townsville is supposed to arrive about 11.45pm. It will be a late meeting point.

The picture of the day is Mark & I enjoying our curry.   

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