We left Lamen Bay on Epi just before midnight last Friday for a supposedly light-air sail down to Efate, some sixty miles to the south. “Light air” turned out to be about fifteen knots. At least it wasn’t right on the nose, just a one-legged beat to weather. So, I drove her hard, harder that ever before, full sail, rail down, smashing through the seas at six knots. Fun for a few hours, but it was getting pretty old by the time we reached the lee of Efate and ran out of wind.
Starting the engine, we found that there was no cooling water flowing out of the exhaust. Uh-oh! Not good. Shut the engine down to investigate. Can’t find anything wrong. Checked the sea-strainer for blockage; nothing. Start the engine again; still no water; shut it down. Pulled the hose off the nipple where it injects the cooling water into the exhaust gases. Started the engine briefly to check the flow; good flow; shut down again (the cooling water was going into the engine room at that point). Put the hose back on; restarted a third time; ran normally! Go figure. This is the sort of thing that gives me nightmares. Without the engine, under the current conditions, it would have been difficult and time-consuming to make it into port.
By the way, the title quote comes from an old mountaineering book where a truck in India, broken down on the way to the Himalayas, is being worked on by an Indian mechanic. Unable to fix it, he turns to the European passenger, shruggs his shoulders and says, “It is but machinery, Sahib.”
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