6 months in search of the invisible

Incident before arriving in Cape Town: When leaving the port of East London we found a rough sea and waves from the south, head on, about 3 to 4 meters, separated from each other in a very short time, making navigation more uncomfortable. We started the engine to move away from the coast, facing the waves that were breaking over the bow. Suddenly the battery engine alarm was beeping while the batteries tension dropped to 10v. The engine alternator was overheating. It was impossible for us to turn off the engine, the risk of shipwrecking on the coast was too high. For twenty minutes the situation continued like this, until the alarm stopped and the batteries came back to normal. What had happened? We didn't know, we would find out in Cape Town and later.

Cape Town, brain storming part 1

Cape Town, and its green mountains inviting to explore them, its sky dotted with clouds and its warm afternoons, its trails and waterfalls, and its long beaches. After three months in Cape Town, in Hout Bay, we left for Namibia. What were this months about? How did we spend those three months on dry land, tied to a pontoon for the first time in years? We made various repairs, such as two staycables that needed to be changed, the autopilot that always get broken, the roller furling that had broken again and had to be welded again, the roller furlingtube that showed corrosion and we had to cut down, the sails that needed sewing. We also decided to put the gas outside, in the stern locker, after conversations with sailors in East London. And we replaced several portholes with the methacrylate panels that Hugo, a catamaran builder, enthusiastic about our history, gave to us.

Well, a sort of old boat that sailed a lot, and that was lavished with care by two dreamers without budget. But we also had to reinstall the anchor windlass, which, we had discovered, had been installed inverting the electrical circuit sense. That faulty installation, with a very strong sea, it had made a short circuit leaving East London. Contact with a wave had switch on the windlass, which overheated and started a fire inside the anchor chest, until another wave extinct the short circuit. In Madagascar we had hesitated to change the windlass circuit breaker, and given the price it had and the seller's insistent opinion that we could do without the circuit breaker, we had not done it. Serious mistake! Anyway, faced with the facts, we decided in Cape Town to re-installed the solenoid in a dry place inside the boat, to add a new circuit breaker, and add two more switches for the positive line and one for the negative one, we changed all the windlass cables for thicker ones, and, of course, installed the positive and negative ones in their good sense. The East London incident had us opened our eyes to the failures of the electrical installation on board. A few months later a sailor told us “when you buy a boat from someone, you don't have to take anything for granted – You have to verify absolutely everything, question everything, and many times redo it”. We are learning on the way, and it had not occurred to us to question the installation of the windlass or the electrical circuit as a whole. But Cape Town was not just that. It was, above all, an intense search for a sudden attack of electrolysis that arose on the boat. A week after docking “Tortuga”, white spots foam began to appear all around the engine, and then on the rest of the hull. Everyone was emphatic, both the sailors with aluminum boats in the marina and friends from afar, the forums and the books: there was, on the boat, an electrical leak. “It is about arming yourself with patience” they told us, “and finding the faulty cable”. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. A wire? Which? We live inside the boat and our economy did not allow us to rent a house and empty the boat to search well. We would have to dismantle it while staying inside.

 There are worse things than living in a workshop, of course. Also, I have to say, there was a good mood on board that seemed invincible. First, we thought it could be the same engine alternator, given the electrical problem we had at sea when the windlass shorted out. But after consulting several people, they all stated that if the alternator had a problem, it would not work, or it would leak. The alternator seemed to work well. It wasn't the alternator, we had to look elsewhere. I found workshops for the children, chess and music, so that they have a social life.

We also decided that no matter what happens, we would go out once a week all day to walk those mountains that called us so much.

Those walks were a respite from that infernal quest. And the walks along the beach, in the evenings, in which we disconnected from the boat, as much as possible. Oiuna rescue several birds during those months, and we even had to live for a week with two ducklings in the bathroom until an animal protection association send a member to fetch them. Two ducklings in the bathroom, a cat, a seagull on the deck, two children, party games, meals, conversations, nights, in a disassembled ship, in which little by little a wooden plank was not left in its place.

Oiuna y una amiga rescatando gaviotas

Un viejo marinero que viajó 20 años en un barco de aluminio nos dijo que pensáramos en todo lo que habíamos hecho o que había sucedido antes de que empezara el ataque Y entonces repasábamos una y otra vez cada hecho mínimo, a ver si allí se encontraba la respuesta. Claro que volvíamos al incidente de East London regularmente, sin encontrar la respuesta. Diego volvió a diseñar el circuito eléctrico, cambiamos algunos cables, renunciamos a las dos heladeras, con el lema “cuánto más simple mejor” y ahí pasaba el día, murmurando “positivo, negativo, positivo, negativo” y ese maldito voltaje en el casco. Estaban a veces las visitas de  Andrei, quién lo ayudó a Diego a soldar el enrollador y volver a fijar la balsa salvavidas sobre el puente, y que nos invitaba a cenar cuando nos veía cansados.  Andrei se reía de él y nosotros, con las mismas ganas que nosotros, y con él  podíamos celebrar lo absurdo que era todo, en su barco de acero “Argus”, que tenía dentro un verdadero taller. También estaba la visita de otro marinero, Manu, que nos volvió a soldar el cuello de cisne de la botavara y  nos hizo una pieza especial para adaptar nuestras botellas de gas. Y hasta vinieron los abuelos de Francia y se llevaron a los niños a pasear por Sudáfrica una semana mientras nosotros nos encontrábamos a solas en un entorno que se las arregló para ser romántico a su manera. Los meses pasaron, y el barco mejoró bajo muchos aspectos. El nuevo circuito eléctrico se había asencillado mucho, habíamos tirado metros de cables inútiles, cambiado los que eran necesarios, mejorado la jarcia.

nuevo circuito eléctrico diseñado por Diego

An old sailor who traveled for 20 years on an aluminum boat told us to think about everything we had done or that had happened before the attack began. So, we went over and over again every minute and facts, to see if it was the answer there. Of course we returned to the East London incident regularly, without answers. Diego redesigned the electrical circuit, we changed some cables, we laid-up the two refrigerators, with the motto “the simpler the better” and there Diego spent the day, muttering “positive, negative, positive, negative” and that damn voltage in the hull. There were sometimes visits from Andrei, who helped Diego weld the roller furlingand fix the life raft on the bridge, and who invited us to dinner when he saw us tired. Andrei laughed at him and us and we laughed with the same enthusiasm as him, and with him we could celebrate the absurdity of everything, on his steel ship “Argus”, which had a real workshop inside. There was also the visit from another sailor, Manu, who re-welded the goose-neck of the boom and made us a special piece to adapt and fill our gas bottles. And even the grandparents from France came and took the children for a walk around South Africa a week while we were alone in an environment that we managed to be romantic in its own way. The months passed, and the boat improved in many ways. The new electrical circuit had become much simpler, we had removed meters of useless cables, changed those that were necessary, improved the rigging.

But the electrolysis continued. Twice we took everything apart to clean the hull with a cloth and freshwater, and a week later it came back. Sometimes Diego claimed victory, he had found a leak! It was an old cable, but when changing it the problem continued, even if it with some less amp. When he didn't have his hands on the cables, Diego read Nigger Calder's manual on electricity on board.

It was a new learning, and we tried to listen to “Tortuga”, what was she saying? Where was the fault? Finally, we found that on march was ending, our visa was ending, and the season to be able to sail from South Africa to Namibia was also ending. We had to go. Ready, no, we were not ready, we would continue in Namibia and our optimism made us think that it would be easy. We almost had it. We also had the idea that the port of Hout Bay was very contaminated, and we hoped that by leaving the problem would solve itself. We had already repaired so many things! And the hull was clean. Anything was possible. And anyway, there were no others option.

So we left, from Hout Bay to Cape Town to make the official departure, the last day of the visa we had, with a Mae's chess friend on board, and all the friends from those months on the dock, hugging us and wishing us the best. We had slept two hours that night, to finish transforming that workshop into a navigable boat to have a very calm navigation in which we could sleep. But a few miles from setting sail on that windless day, the engine stopped expelling water from the exhaust and we had to turn it off. We called the commodore of Hout Bay, Richard, who came to pick us up back to harbour. He also helped us to call port control administration to explain our delay. Everyone was at the dock, Manu immediately started looking with Diego for the cause of the problem and a couple of hours later it was resolved: air was getting into the raw water pump system from the front cover. Diego sanded it and put it back turned over and the engine started pushing water outside again. Manu gave us a new switch to contact the crank batteries bank (which had broken that morning despite being new!), and a spare water filter. He gave us a sewing machine and gadgets to make electronic inventions, and then Andrei and he let us sleep. When we woke up at the evening they had prepared a barbecue on Andrei s boat, and they were waiting for us. What joy and warmth give those gestures so supportive and simple, spontaneous and happy! I was almost happy for the motor incident, which allowed us to feel that shelter of our sailor friends. But clearly, “Tortuga” was not ready to cross the Atlantic, just to go to Namibia, 800 very shacked miles.

vuelta a Hout Bay, los amigos nos ayudaron y agasajaron

Luderitz, the brain storming part 2

Evaldyn, the port control woman in Ludertiz, gave us permission to tie ourselves to the old wooden jetty in the port, “at our own risks”, since we did not have a dinghy to cover the distance between the anchorage and the port, but rather a simple kayak which could only, with the risk of tipping over, carrying two people. In Cape Town, Richard, the commodore of Hout Bay, had given us an old wooden dinghy that Mael had partially repaired, but we had not yet tried it. Evaldyn, adorable, told us to stay a few days in the wooden jetty, that she would speak with the port captain to explain the situation, that there would be no cost. At immigration they explained to us that Argentines could not have a visa on arrival, that it took a week to do it and, optimistic and with the idea of ​​continuing our trip soon, we did not ask for it. Then, when we wanted it, they explained to us that they could no longer grant us the visa because it could only be requested upon arrival. So the crew had two people with visas, Oiuna and I, and two without, Diego and Mael. The immigration lady gave them permission, however, to go to the Yatch Club, which was outside the port, a few meters away.

When we “opened” the boat bottoms, we found electrolysis again. Having left Cape Town did not solve the problem- Luderitz, desert, town. When it blew from the north, a dense fog covered the old wooden jetty. And Diego was still searching. The boat was dismantled, we almost couldn't even step on it, an almost desperate search for that electrical leak. How do you find something you can't see? To make matters worse, we discovered that the wood was conductive, due to the moisture it contained. That discovery left us even more lost. “I feel bad for Tortuga,” Diego told me. “She's sick, and I can't fix the problem.” Will we leave beyond the salt desert that separates us from Brazil? Who knows. Mael returned to repair the wooden dinghy that was taking some water. He made a mast for it and using the hammock as sail, he used it to pick up freshwater. I put the sewing machine that Manu gave us in use, and I fixed things. I made some shadows for the cockpit. And the school, the kitchen, the walks to town to look for cables, or connectors. We wrapped up the days with so much pampering, so much laughter, games and reading, that became soft despite that electrical leaks and that disorder that occupied the entire boat. Despite the prohibition for the boys to go to town, the sea was missed and entered in our dreams, with a strength that it had not had until then. I could dream its sounds, the force of the waves or currents on the hull, the noise of chains and anchor. And the days passed. Some sailors also passed by, they dropped the anchor, bought provisions and left. I watched them leave like someone looking through the window at a landscape who calls, without being able to leave.

Diego y Mae en la barca con una hamaca de vela

One day Giel appeared in front of the boat. A tall, strong man, already in years, who told us he was the founder of the Seven Sea Project, and asked us what was wrong. We had already gotten used to summarizing the problem in a brief sentence that little revealed the desperate nature of the situation: “electric problem”. Giel gave us the contact of a marine electrician, “the best in Luderitz”. He also opened the doors of his house for us, up the hill, to use the washing machine. Those were beautiful hours we spent up there with Oiuna and that strange man. His yard reminded me of other patios, and it was always full of birds that he fed. We discovered that we both shared an interest in photography. He had a passion for photography for many years, he used to have a laboratory and delighted with my cyanotypes, he gave me several manuals with all the chemistry to make my own laboratory, and an analog camera that I have fantasized a lot about.

I discovered in Giel, despite his reclusive character, a man who knew a lot, who studied electrical engineering and photography, maritime and air rescue, chemistry and physics, who was in experiments to create, in addition to his own compost, his own bio-gas with which he powered a part of his house. More than a house resembled a laboratory full of experiments and chemical formulas on the walls. Here a machine to make “baotze”, there an Afghan pressure pots, on the shelf all kinds of ferments, in the corner some sprouts of plants of the desert that disappeared due to the destruction of some European pharmaceutical companies. Enchanted by children and animals, very critical of humans and this society, a lonely and lunatic man, visionary and long suffering, rational and deeply tender.

Meanwhile, Diego had made friends with the people of the port, who, always kind, made their workshop available to us. We continued changing cables, we attacked the solar panels and their connections, the cables of the mast, and finally we asked the port electrician to come and see. The man came, pleasant, he confirmed a small loss, judging it unimportant, he confirmed again that the alternator was fine. Then I went to look for the “best marine electrician in Ludertiz”, Heinz, who had his workshop on the desert shores, outside the town. I told him the whole situation in as much detail as possible, returning once again to the East London incident, and he promised to show up, as soon as I obtained permission to enter the port. “If it is the alternator" he told me with a calm voice, "then I'll disassemble it and bring it here, to the workshop. We'll fix it, it's no problem. He also made me understand that he was not an specialist in aluminum boats. A few days later he came on board, pleasant and concentrated, he looked at the engine, the alternator, various cables. He concluded that the alternator was fine, and told us that if the boat were made of steel, he would not hesitate to plug the negative on the hull. “Since it's aluminum, I'll keep my doubts" he concluded.

That idea of ​​a negative in the hull had already been evoked in Cape Town. There are, in the world of aluminum boats, two great ideas. Those who maintain connecting the negative in the hull protects against electrolysis, since any stray current that circulates through the hull would return to the battery through the negative, and those who maintain that the hull has to be completely insulated, since that would produce corrosion. We have a boat model that came with the “European” theory, that means, total insulation, a floating system. But, as Heinz stressed, if there is dust on the engine silent blocks or continuity (electric contact) that insulate the engine, then the hull is no longer isolated. We started again to read various theories investigating that topic, and the more we investigated the less we knew.

We had been in Luderitz for a month, a month in which Mael and Diego had only gone out once in Giel's car, to go see the desert and get some air from the port. So, if the two electrical mechanics told us that the alternator was well, that the problem was minimal, and no one else seemed to be able to help us, what rested for us to do? We cleaned the entire hull once again. We placed the boat on the beach and we scraped the hull outside, and we prepared to set sail by stowing the boat. The departure was coming! It could be smelled in the air! We said goodbye to Oiuna's friends, to the friends of the club, to the friends of the port and workshop and port control, to the street children who had asked us to adopt them and take them to the sea and with whom Mael regularly played freeze bee or soccer in front of the club, defending them to the police officer who wanted to kick them out, saying that they had as much right to play as the other children. I was hugged by the supermarket cashiers with whom I had talked regularly about their unacceptable working conditions. We were already going. Before leaving, we decided to go to spend a day or two on an island a few miles from Luderitz. See a little of its fauna, have a little walk before such a long journey and see if everything worked on board. I noticed to Port Control, we left for 24 hours (or 48), to do a sea trials, before coming to make the formal departure.

What a party! The sea again, the boat settled, the dolphins playing around “Tortuga”, and that anchorage out of time, so silent, peaceful, from which we could observe the pink flamingos on the shores of the desert, and the colonies of penguins on an isolated rock. We took an excursion ashore, and I admit that I couldn't stop laughing out loud watching those clumsy birds walk, fight or fuss, jump or run. The sunset went from being bright to being lost in thick fog, which was as quick to settle as it was to disappear. We decided to spend the night there, a night full of stars. Before dawn everyone was ready to go to land again, and Diego began the kayak trips, one by one. When we returned we both turned over, with jackets and everything, and in addition to the fit of laughter it gave us, it gave us the incontestable right to affirm that we have bathed in those icy waters.

But when setting sail there was a beeping engine alarm again when the anchor was raised, and the batteries went down. The auto pilot broke down and it was evidently due to an electrical problem, and we were able to verify that we had a water inlet at the level of the engine. Jack London described the preparation of his ship in a chapter entitled “The inconceivable and the monstrous”.  I think it sums it up well, one no longer understands, looking back, how so many days, so many hours could have passed, how it could be that everything seemed to impede the trip, that the obstacles multiplied in unthinkable twists and turns. In itself, the pilot could be fixed, as always, and the water loss was due to the engine's raw water pump, we had to find a replacement, a seal, and I walked the few dusty streets of Luderitz, like a detective, and I talked about it at night with the club members, while they drank their beers, and in the end that piece was found, even if it took a while for it to reach the town.

Meanwhile, we found an eminence in the world of aluminum boats online, a man who lived in Australia and had published a lot on the subject. We got in direct contact with him, and as we exchanged emails everything we thought we knew evaporated. He maintained that if one is not connected to the jetty, one could not be affected by the galvanic corrosion of another ship. Despite being in the same electrolyte (seawater), it could not be affected if there was no connection between the two boats. He told us about experiments that proved this and about his own ship that was always impeccable without sacrificial anodes. So, what about the whole theory of using many anodes in port because the electrical charge was harmful? He also maintained that what we had was not electrolysis but corrosion, not due to electrical loss but to contamination: dust, dirt, chlorine contained in the water of the ports and the salt from the waves that had sometimes entered inside. This corrosion was solved with thorough cleaning and constant maintenance. He told us that if there was an electrical loss it would affect our anodes, and not the hull. At this point, electricity seemed like witchcraft to me.

Following that man's advice, Diego moved the control box, and which we suspect continues to release residual voltage in the hull, and fixed it outside the engine, on an insulted support. And following the corrosion clue due to contamination, we began to dismantle everything again. More than before. We dismantled all the wood in contact with the hull, poorly done, it was poorly done, because where it had contact, there was pronounced corrosion. We cutted wood, we sanded and treated. We realized that the sink had a small leak that caused a few drops of salt water to always get into the hull. We dismantled the sink and there I went around town looking for impossible replacement parts, until we found the creative person who could imagine a solution and get us all the pieces without wanting to charge us anything. To bring joy and keep the kids who lived as confined, especially Mael, I proposed that they add color on the doors. This is how the kids set up their carpentry workshop, and they repainted a large part of the boat's wood.

Meanwhile, we washed every corner of the boat with distilled water and neutral soap, drying afterwards with a soft cloth. And Diego continued searching. Negative, positive. The electric leak continued, and every day we saw more electrolysis. “When you see it once”, told us Denisson, a sailor friend who was passing through and who brightened our evenings by coming to dinner with his thousand stories about the sea, "you always see more later". We thought about taking “Tortuga” out of the water, and again both the people in the port and the people from the town offered us all the help they were capable of, but it was very unsafe to lift it in the conditions there. We thought about lifting the engine to see underneath and re insulate it, we thought about setting sail.

Meanwhile, the dinghy was lost, tied clumsily by one of the kids. We spent hours, in vain, in a borrowed dinghy searching it in the shores of the desert.

One day when I was in Giel's cool yard, hanging the clothes out to dry, I told him about the impossible to find the electrical leak, and the story of East London. Then Giel told me it was probably the alternator, and that it didn't matter that it was working well, it does not seem to have any faults, the electricians told us there was no problem. The alternator could have a broken diode and continue working as if nothing had happened. We had to remove it from the engine, open it, and test the diodes. So Diego, disassembled the alternator and did the test suggested by Giel. There was indeed a leak, and I returned with the heavy famous piece in my backpack to Heinz's workshop, on the other edge of the desert. And Heinz told me that if we wanted he would open it, but that Diego was looking for “a cat in a bag where there was no cat”. But, what then? “If your engine was well insulated, you would have no problem, if you had a negative to the hull, neither”. We had no certainties, except that if there would be no electrical loss it would not matter so much that the engine is not well insulated, and that with a loss we would not connect the negative to the hull. Heinz agreed to disassemble it and found, indeed, a broken diode. We were able to get in touch with a skipper who would come in a dozen days. He would bring us the spare part from Cape Town, and the friends there took care of the purchase and delivery to the skipper.

I felt that all this was a necessary step, a learning about “Tortuga”. With our initiation in the sea, this frustrating and tiring stage it was necessary, essential. When we manage to get out, when the wood and the kitchen are reassembled and the electricity running, the engine mounted, the hull shining, we would then be better captains of the “Tortuga” ship.

And that day arrived, after the third full moon in Luderitz, which we took advantage of to take out the boat to the beach and heal the hull and clean it. We stayed one more day under the suspicious gaze of the immigration officer, since Diego had managed to work on a catamaran to change the oil in the engines and we were not going to despise a job. And again, the hugs and greetings, to so many people who helped us, the tears of Evaldyn pressing Oiuna against her chest and saying “my baby, my youngest sailor”, one last look towards that tireless desert, and towards the sea, heading towards the island of Saint Helena! Conclusions? No, none, everything is open, like the open sea.