2 April 2008 Whangaroa Marina, Whangaroa
No gas!
We were very good and did our boat work. Everything came out of the lockers, lockers were cleaned and everything was put back. We checked & rearranged our stores. If you were worried, we have 5 bottles of Drambuie on board so no shortage there. We cleaned ports shook out carpets, cleaned stove, toilet and anything that moved. And felt very virtuous afterwards. (locker = cupboard, port = window)
Rob thought his reward would be beer but instead he got to kayak around Waitepipi Bay (One of our best ever ancorages).
Then we headed into Whangaroa. Gotta have a drink at the Whangaroa Game Fishing Club. Zane Grey did.
We find a nice spot, drop the pick, I am happy with set (my job to set anchor) but whenever we are going to leave the boat we wait an hour or so to make sure we are not going to drag (vivid memories of dragging in Fitzroy taking several boats along for the ride while we were watching from the boating club). Rob goes below to turn on kettle (which is nice & clean on very clean stove) and there is no gas.
We’d run out of gas on our big cylinder a day or so ago and had swapped to the smaller cylinder which we’d used for the barbeque but still had plenty of gas. So, as you do we, panicked, thinking there must be a leak. And on a yacht the only place for gas to go is the bilge (very bad). No gas means no hot water and no cooking.
For gas, Zinkwazi has a belt & brace set-up. Gas bottles are in our lasarette locker which vents into the cockpit. When leaving the boat we physically turn the gas bottles off. Not really necessary because the bottle we are using has an electric solenoid which isolates at the bottle when there is no current. To use gas we have to turn on the current to open the bottle and it stays on for an hour unless we turn on again. We also have a gas detector and replaced and tested the sensor just before we left. We treat gas with a good deal of caution.
We can’t smell gas and the gas alarm is not going off so we think we either under-estimated how much we’ve used or the leak was into lazarette locker and has been vented out. Not that we go hunting with naked flames.
Anyway we decide to check into marina, get bottles filled, get laundry done, get rid of rubbish and drink beer at WGFC.
Rob gets gas bottles out and shakes the culprit bottle and there is still gas in it. In addition to all the other switches we also have an over-ride switch over the stove and I must have turned it off in my cleaning frenzy.
The moral of this story? CLEANING IS BAD.
Anyway gas bottles & laundry are off to Kaeo. We did a fair bit of beer drinking, showered ashore and then wandered across the road to the pub for tea.
Tomorrow we are going to walk up St Pauls. We are also going to climb the Dukes Nose while we are in Whangaroa.
And Friday or Saturday we will head north.