Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure

[goosehd]

...and a off the wall thought...I wonder if the pickup wasn't properly placed in the tank and is only 2/3 of the way where it should be. Maybe you're running out of fuel because of it's placement.

Edit: The more I think about this, the more I think that this might be your issue especially for the way you describe it falling off.

[goosehd]

Is this drawing close to your fuel system?

[ROman]

Not that I'm an expert on fuel tanks, but I did do similar work with water tanks with pumps. There should be 2 tanks with a line between the 2 that would equalize the 2 tanks. Sometimes something as simple as the filter on the one tank would become clogged or challenged and would mess up the one tank.

[Giles]

@goosehd Yes it is, though we have 2 fuel tanks and 2 engines, with a transfer pipe between the tanks, which we can open or closed.

[Giles]

@goosehd Pretty sure that it cant be that I am afraid, we draw the fuel from an outlet about 2 inches from the bottom of the tank.....

[goosehd]

The fact that it’s repeatable at the same point is what’s confusing me. A vacuum/vapour lock issue would be somewhat random (at least in my mind).

[Giles]

@ROman We have been running them separately. But we can, with a flick of a valve join them. One of the things I will do when we are home is install a fuel pump and diesel polisher on that pipe, so that I can shunt the fuel from one tank to the other cleaning it with each pass. We had that system on PILGRIM and I am pretty (read, fucking)( surprised we do not have it as standard on SAKURA....

[Giles]

@tody said in Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure:

@Giles Just some food for thought, does ambient temperature probably play a role?

I don't think so. temps have been pretty consistent whilst we have been away....

[bryaneidins70]

Could the fuel feed and return line be round the wrong way. Based upon the drawing...if the feed line is coming from the top of the tank as the fuel gets below the pipe, thats when the airlock/vacum is created?

[Giles]

What I know for certain, is that it runs OK between 100% and 65%. Just going to make sure we don't go below that until Sasga engineers have been and looked....

[goosehd]

@Giles one final push home or another stop planned?

[Giles]

We're trying for a final push....But the sea state is shit and we are limping along at 6knots. We may have to abort if it does not get better....

[Twistlock]

Plus lots of traffic ahead

[Giles]

The weather is bad and predicted to get worse through the day and night. It would be foolhardy to continue and put SAKURA through a lot of stress (we are slamming into big seas), so we are running back to Brest. The weather across the channel is forecast to be awful for a week or two. so we will get home without SAKURA, and come pick her up as soon as we can.

[Daniel San]

now that’s not a happy ending

[Twistlock]

Bummer, sensible decision though.

[Giles]

They say there are two kinds of sailors, those who have hit another yacht, and those who lieWell, thank Christ, I longer have to lie.....

I misjudged the crosswind today and sideswiped this.

The British captain was awfully nice. When I went onboard to apologise and assess the damage. He seemed to be more concerned about me and the damage to SAKURA. I said that I was not sure what to do in this situation, he told me to relax, fuck off and not to worry....

Go large, or go home.....

[Nik]

This first journey keeps getting more epic. Sakura is giving you the full experience.

[Matt]

Have you gotten to the pirates yet @Giles ? Just checking to see how many boxes you can check off your list before you make it home.

[Giles]

Paula and I have decided to stay in Brest and have some downtime, just the two of us. The weather in The Channel looks good from Sunday for a couple of days, so we'll keep an eye on it and make a dash when we can. It would be good to have another person or two with us, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that we can find one or two people with time on their hands....