Stuck in the Seychelles

Well, we guess it had to happen to us sometime….it happened to “Excalibur” in Tonga, it happened to “Moby” in Cairns, and now it had happened to us: we were stuck!! While our friends are out exploring the islands of the Seychelles, we are stuck in the Marina, with no engines and no hope of going anywhere until the parts arrive and we can repair them…but let me back track…

August 10th - 16th:  On Passage from Chagos to Seychelles:

These red-footed Boobies hitched a ride with us on the way to Seychelles.  They spent an entire night hanging on by their little webbed feet!  These amazing sea birds dive into the ocean to catch fish like torpedoes!  Aren't they so pretty with their bright red feet, blue beaks and pale yellow heads?  I love them...but look at the mess they left us on the bow cushions!!

Enjoying a last sunset at sea on the way to Seychelles

Q flag up, and Seychelles courtesy flag flying.  Gaby loves the Seychelles flag...it's very colorful!!

Thursday, August 17th:

We arrived in the early morning of August 17th, and anchored in the quarantine area in the outer harbor of Port Victoria. Customs, Immigration and a host of other officials arrived at about 9:00am to check us in. We were in the Eden Island Marina by 10:00am. So far, so good! We got settled in, and planned what we would do for the next couple of days: refill our LPG (cooking) gas, top up our diesel, do some provisioning and explore Mahe a little. We also knew we had a little repair to do on our wind instrument, as it had started working intermittently during the last few days of our passage. It meant a trip up the mast, but Dave was hoping it was just a loose wire. Alternatively, we had a spare instrument on board, and we should be easily able to switch it out. So Thursday was tidy, a small shop, organize a car, SIM cards for our phones and other general admin.

Friday, August 18th:

We took the rental car to New Port, where we had been told we could get our gas bottle refilled. Ha! That turned out to be almost comical…the refill place told us we needed to go to the Seychelles Bureau of Standards, to get it tested to ensure that the pressure would be OK, and they could safely fill it. Our gas bottle is brand new, we just bought it in Australia, and this is the first time we were trying to get it filled, but, since it was a different bottle to what you get here, they wouldn’t fill it without a certificate saying it was safe. When we got to the Bureau of Standards, which was in a completely different part of town, and rather difficult to find, they were confused and a little annoyed that we had been sent there.

The Seychelles Bureau of Standards building - we finally found it!

After about 30 – 45 minutes Dave was asked to come back at 11:00am. We went back to New Port to find the Ministry of Health, because we had to pay R300 as a health clearance fee. Once we’d done that, we headed back to the Bureau of Standards. They asked us to come back at 1:00pm…So, to kill some time, we went for a short drive down the coast of Mahe, and had a lovely lunch overlooking Anse Royale, one of the bays on the south east side of Mahe. Back to the Bureau of Standards, and amazingly enough we got our certificate!!

Dave returning to the car with the gas bottle and...what is that?  A certificate, perhaps?!

YES!  Success at last!!

 We drove back to New Port, and went to the refill place, proudly showing our certificate. No, he said, you first have to go to another office, and pay for everything!! Back in the car, find the payment office, make the payment and back to the refill place. It’ll be about 30 minutes to fill the gas bottle…seriously?! Luckily there was a supermarket opposite the refill place, so we went and perused the shop and bought a few groceries while we waited. By this time it was about 4:00pm and we were DONE! We were not used to this hectic lifestyle!!

Saturday, August 19th:

All is still good in the world of Cool Runnings. We have our gas filled, we’ve paid our fees, and we took the car and our 9 jerry cans to the petrol station in the morning and got the diesel we needed. After that was done, we took a drive along the north part of the island. We saw some nice bays and pretty scenery, but by early afternoon, after we’d made the loop back to Victoria, we decided to come back to the boat and work on blog posts and plan our time in the Seychelles.

 North Mahe, Seychelles

North Mahe, Seychelles

Sunday, August 20th:

Our friends on “Shuti” arrive at the marina and we spend some time catching up with them. Their family was arriving on Tuesday, August 22nd, so they were getting ready for “Hotel Shuti” to open! In the afternoon, we take our rental car and take another drive around the island, over the mountain range and along the west coast and south, making a big loop back to the marina. It was the prettiest of the drives we had done.

The view from the mountain down onto Eden Island and the Marina and over to St. Anne island

Monday, August 21st:

We had planned to leave on this day, after Dave had made a quick trip up the mast to fix the wind instrument. I hauled him up, and he came back down with a grim look on his face. Turns out the fix is not so simple. The part we thought we could just unplug and replace, has a 5 pronged pin fitting, and one of the pins had corroded and broken off into the piece that goes into the mast. So guess what…? We had to remove the entire cable and re-thread a new cable through the mast (not an easy task) and then fit the new instrument at the top of the mast. We extend our stay at the marina for one more night, since this isn’t an easy fix. We spend the day working on the wind instrument installation, and finally, with Momi’s help (from Shuti), we get the new cable threaded and the wind instrument installed.

Tuesday, August 22nd:

We take a last quick walk to the “Spar” supermarket in the Eden Marina Plaza to get a few more supplies for our time cruising around the island. We pull up our dock lines and head out the marina. Just around the corner, as we are clear of the channel, we turn into the wind and raise our mainsail. Dave revs both engines to get back on course once the sail is up, and I hear him say, “We have no thrust from the starboard engine!”. Benjamin gets on the throttle while Dave goes and inspects. He tells him to rev it again…it slips, but the gears engage. Back to neutral….back in gear….nothing. Dave says, “We have two choices: we can go on one engine and try and fix this later, or we can turn around and go back to the marina”. We all know the wise thing to do is go back to the marina. We turn around and limp back on one engine. We call to Shuti, who are of course surprised to see us, to help us with the lines. Luckily, we were still able to get the starboard engine into reverse, so we were able to get back into the slip we had just vacated. And we’re still here, a week later, and expect to be here for another week still…

Thank goodness for "Spar" and Milk Tart, a typical South African desert!

For those who are interested, this is what happened: The Lagoon 400’s are equipped with Yanmar SD50 saildrives. This is the part that engages the gears and turns the propellers. The SD ‘s are known for having a problem with the cone clutch, that is known to begin to slip after about 500 engine hours. At this time, the cone clutch either needs to be replaced, or it can be lapped, essentially “roughed up”, so that the gears can engage again. We had lapped both cone clutches in Australia, and had only done 200 hours on the engines since that time, but we think that the low-rev motoring that we did in Indonesia, to save fuel, may have contributed to the earlier-than-expected need to lap the cone clutches again. Either way, this was the problem, and we needed to fix it.

The offending cone clutch

We are lucky that this happened here, where there is a big charter fleet, and therefore also mechanics and Yanmar dealers. We spent the rest of Tuesday trying to locate a mechanic and asked both the charter companies here, and the Yanmar dealer for numbers of mechanics and both said they would have someone call us. We sat and waited. Dave is not one to sit idle, and he generally does everything himself. This is one of the few things he had not done, but that didn’t stop him. He began researching how to remove and lap the cone clutch. One problem we faced was that we didn’t have the paste needed for lapping, and we didn’t have a vice strong enough to take the cone clutch apart, once removed from the sail drive. But Dave felt confident that he could at least remove them, and that would also help keep the cost of the repair down, as it would be his time, and not a mechanic’s, spent removing the drives. Late on Tuesday afternoon we received a call from the one mechanic, who said he’d be by in the morning to have a look.

Wednesday, August 23rd:

Dave got to it, and managed to remove the cone clutch from the starboard side, and then decided it would be best to do the same on the port engine. In the meantime, Sylvain, the mechanic came and said he would be able to lap the cone clutches. So the day was spent removing the cone clutches, getting them to Sylvain, who lapped them, and then replacing them again. The first time we put them back, the port side worked fine, but the starboard side did not engage in forward, and reverse was barely engaging. Dave was concerned that when he put the part back, he had damaged something. It was either that, or the part had not been put back properly. He decided to take it out, and put it back again. He did this, and this time it was even worse. Nothing happened. There was no engaging in forward or reverse. In the meantime, Sylvain had located a brand new cone clutch that Sunsail, the charter company, had in stock. They had upgraded all their boats to SD60 saildrives, so they no longer needed this one, and agreed to sell it to us for half price, which was still a whopping $1,600. By now it was evening, and Dave was exhausted. We decided to get the new part the next day, and we also received a call from the boat yard here, who had gotten the call from the Yanmar dealer, and had been asked to call us. It turns out Rajan is South African, and grew up not far from where Dave and I grew up in Westville! His mechanic, Phillip, is also South African, originally from Cape Town. Dave explained the situation, and asked if Phillip could also come and have a look. Unfortunately, he was only available on Friday, but we were penciled in for Friday.

Dave in the engine room...

Thursday, August 24th:

Sylvain brought the brand new part, and Dave went back into the engine compartment and removed our old cone clutch. Once the new part was in, we tried engaging the gears again, but there was still nothing. Now we knew it was something bigger. Dave feared the worst, that he had cracked the housing where the engine and the saildrive connect. He called Rajan, who had Phillip call Dave, and explaining everything to Phillip over the phone, we concluded that it was more than likely a cracked housing. Our hearts sank. Not wanting to mess anything up further, Dave stopped working on the engine, and instead did some preliminary phoning around to see if there was a spare housing on the island. There was not, and it would take at a minimum, 6 days to get one. We had now been in the marina for a week, and things were looking bleak! Dave said that if we had to wait for a part to come in, we could just go on one engine, while we waited. It would be more difficult, but not impossible to get out of the marina, and back in again, and Shuti and Moby confirmed that the anchorages were all big enough to maneuver easily with just one engine.

Back into the engine room

Out with the cone clutch again

Friday, August 25th:

Phillip arrives and we lift the engine so he can inspect the housing. He confirms that it is indeed a cracked bearing housing. To be safe, we decide that he should check the port side as well. We lift the port side engine as well, and he removes the cone clutch and inspects the engine. That housing is OK, but we decide to rather be safe than sorry. Phillip calls around as well, but no-one has the part we need, and he orders 2, one for each engine. He also takes both the cone clutches, so he can inspect them, lap them again if necessary (as we were not sure they were properly done the first time), and he also takes the brand new part to calibrate it. So now we have absolutely no engines, and definitely won’t be going anywhere!!

The other item we are dealing with is that we have a cracked front hatch glass, that we have been trying to source….again no easy task and there is no stock in Seychelles or South Africa. As we anticipate doing some upwind sailing into big seas as we head towards South Africa, this is a critical component to safely keep water from entering over the bows and into the salon area.  We finally sourced a hatch from a company in England, and are having it shipped to the Seychelles.  We know it is on the island, now it has to clear customs, and we will be able to install it before we leave for Mayotte.

Dave working on the cracked hatch

We hope that this is the last of 3 major items that we have had to deal with since arriving in Seychelles, and that soon we will be able to leave this marina and explore the Seychelles by boat. Reports from both Moby and Shuti are not glowing thus far, but given all our standards are all so high after just visiting Chagos, we will still be happy to “get out there” again!

Tuesday, September 5th:

We are still in the Marina.  The manager of the Moorings/Sunsail charter base, who has been so kind and helpful to us, said the upside of this is that we might be spending Christmas with them!  Just kidding...the parts have arrived, and we are expecting Phillip, the mechanic, to come by this morning to help Dave get everything back into place again!  In the meantime, we’ve been using the time to do some spring cleaning…Cool Runnings got an overhaul inside and out!  I cleaned out all the storage areas and cupboards, reorganized and inventoried all the food, and washed all bedding and anything that could conceivably be washed in the washing machine!  On the outside, we’ve polished the entire boat…it ended up taking about 5 days, but with everyone pitching in, we have a shiny boat, ready to head out into the big yonder once again!

All the food is repacked and inventoried!

Ben and Gaby pull the boat towards the dock so that Dave can polish the hard to reach areas on the starboard hull

Ben polishing

Gaby doing her bit

Ben even had a go with the buffer!

Dave and I polish the port hull from the dinghy

Tomorrow our friend Stephan du Toit arrives from South Africa!  He is joining us for the passage from Seychelles to Mayotte.  Yay!  We have an extra person for night shift!! ;-) So we will wait for him and then head out on Thursday morning to explore the islands for a few days before having to leave.  We have been watching the weather, and need to wait for a good weather window.  It's going to be a tight reach, meaning the wind will come more from the front than behind, so it will be different to most of the passages we've done so far.  Mary Osterbrock...sorry to disappoint and not be able to report on anything other than engine troubles and views of the marina!  I hope to get an update on the islands of Paslin and La Digue before we head off to Mayotte for you!!  But still we can't complain, we are so lucky to be able to be doing what we are doing, and the sunsets in the marina are not too bad...