What?Fuel Additive?Tradewind Tales from Hervey Bay

by Leisa Scott, www.news.com.au/couriermail on 20 Nov 2007 There's an additive that you put in your diesel fuel to stop a fungal growth that can clog up your fuel filter and make the motor splutter and conk out on you. Who knew?

Well, quite a few trawler-men, diesel mechanics and grotty yachties, as it turns out.

Just not us.

'Does the gunk you got out of it look like somethin’ you’d cough up after a big night on the rum?' a trawler captain asked in a long, nasal drawl.

'Yep,' we said, impressed by his way with words.

'Well,' he said, 'you’ve got the growth.'

The colourful diagnosis was confirmed when we called in yet another diesel mechanic to the marina at Hervey Bay to look at our recalcitrant motor after aborting our horror trip to Bundaberg.

In 10 years of owning Tradewind, filled with long days of chewing the fat with other boaties about sails, diesels, anchors and electronics, we had not picked up on the need for this additive. We had sailed for six months as far as Hinchinbrook Island off Cardwell in far north Queensland in 2000, and never had any fuel glitches. Countless weekends in Moreton Bay had gone by without any concern about some strange little fungus lurking inside the tanks, liable to poop the party at any time.

Of course, we kicked ourselves. How could we have let that sort of detail slip by? What kind of impostors were we, thinking we could set out on an open-ended sailing journey when we didn’t even know about a bloody fuel additive?

As we mooched about feeling dumb, we received a call from a friend who’d just made landfall after his own sea drama further north. His steering on his flash catamaran had broken after battling the northerlies. He couldn’t fix it at sea, but luckily a friend on board was a resourceful type who brought the boat into a marina using the twin motors to steer. Our mate has a way of looking at the positives.

'Well, now you know about this fungus,' he says. 'You could spend a life-time preparing yourself for a long cruise and there’d still be stuff you wouldn’t know or something that would go wrong. Stop being down on yourselves – at least you’re out there doing it.'

He then reminded us of everything we have got right. We’ve beefed up our battery bank so that instead of the original two batteries, we now have four deep-cycle service batteries, a separate starting battery, and two solar panels to power our floating home. We’ve learned that using the diesel to power the batteries is not good for the motor, so we’ve invested in a portable generator to do that work when away from a marina, as well as a new battery charger that whacks in up to 40amps. We bought a battery monitor to let us know our power capacity at all times.

Entire weekends have been devoted to perfecting the art of cutting out rot and patching it with marine ply and fibreglass. The patches look like the work of a professional. We retro-fitted a sewage holding tank which not only cost too much but took away precious cupboard space. We had a yacht rigger go over all of our stays to make sure nothing was set to break under pressure. We replaced the furler for the headsail. Stronger windows have been installed. The steering has been replaced and we check the lagging on the shaft regularly, tightening it when necessary to keep out drips.

As he goes through our learning curve, we start throwing in a few ourselves, buoyed by the realisation that we do know quite a bit.

'And we know how to change the oil filter, and fuel filter,' I volunteer.

'And there ain’t nothing about the workings of the toilet that I haven’t explored,' says Captain Sikaflex from grubby experience.

So, we suck it up and soldier on. After all, the diesel mechanic did declare that Captain Sikaflex did a damn good job bypassing the fuel filter at sea. He advised us to fit a second filter to guard against any fungal growth getting into the system again, which we did. He told us to get a few more filters. We’ve got nine. And we bought that additive.

With our latest drama behind us, and more knowledge up our sleeve, we cast off from the marina on a day of light north-easterlies, and head for Bundaberg. The sea is a different creature from the one we battled on the day of the great fungal discovery, placid and welcoming. We see no whales, and have no mishaps. By 1pm, we’re slipping through Burnett Heads and wending our way up the river, in plenty of time for Christmas.

Read previous episodes and follow the ongoing tale of the Tradewind, as told by Leisa Scott, by going to the Courier Mail Website

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