What’s that smell?

We had a leisurely start to the day today with a motor over from Resolution Bay to Ship Cove. My early riser crew were a bit lighter on their feet this morning but I still decided to exile them to land again for the day. The plan was to do the hefty 17km walk from Ship Cove to Furneaux Lodge.

Ship Cove was James Cook’s favourite New Zealand base during his three voyages of exploration. It is also part of the rich history of Polynesian navigation and has great significance for local Maori.

The natural heritage of the site is reminiscent of the environment Cook would have encountered when he first landed. Over 125 years of preservation have seen the area remain largely unmodified, except for modern visitor facilities.

For early Maori, Meretoto/Ship Cove offered vital shelter from the rough open sea. It is also the only location visited on all three of Cook’s voyages in the 1770s. Cook spent 170 of his total 328 days in the country here, meaning that the site had some of the most precisely measured coordinates in the world at the same time.

Ship Cove monument with Salt Lines in the background

Furneaux Lodge in the background

Crew reading up on the rich history of Ship Cove

Cook’s monument at Ship Cove

Smile everyone! Waterfall near Ship Cove

I sent my crew ashore and was looking forward to 5hrs of peace and quiet. This was not to be……..

We upped anchor and started to motor towards Furneaux Lodge. Juliet and Nick decided to stay on the boat and keep us company. I noticed on the chart plotter that our current speed was the same as our water speed……this meant the paddlewheel underneath the boat was not turning properly and needed a clean. Normally I would pull the thru hull fitting out, replace it with a bung and get a huge dowsing of water in the process. Nick however offered to swim under the boat and give it a clean from underneath once we arrived at our destination. I’ll be sure to remind him of that later.

That wasn’t the major problem unfortunately…… I decided to pump the black water tank out. This is pumped out through a whale pump that’s attached to the wall inside the wet locker. I have to climb on top of the spinnaker and settle in for 400 pumps if the tank is full.

As I started to pump, something didn’t feel right, something also didn’t smell right…… The pump starting gurgling away and I noticed the black water spewing out the sides of the pump, into the bilge and all over the spinnaker! Yikes. I donned some rubber gloves and got to work. Nick was an excellent assistant. We fired the spinnaker up to Sharon and Juliet to deal with that mess and then promptly got to work fixing the pump. Thankfully we had a spare diaphragm in the workshop. We pulled the pump apart, replaced the old diaphragm which looked to be a little old and worn and no longer seated properly between the halves of the pump. Thankfully as we put it back together and gave it some test pumps there were no more leaky bits! Phew!

The leaky culprit

After an afternoon of cleaning and reassembling pumps we decided to head ashore for an ice cream(we’d earnt it) and to check on our motley crew who had arrived at Furneaux Lodge. I think they’d forgotten about their sore legs after a few cold beverages but I was expecting some complaining later on.

The Lodge managed to squeeze both boats in for dinner(thanks guys!) so we settled in and had a lovely feed. Everyone was pleased to be able to dodge the cooking and cleaning up for the night.

I think everyone will be sleeping very well tonight!

Till next time,

Jess :)