[HINT: Read on ...]
We are back in Pula again after a quiet week in the north of Istria.
Early in the week we sailed from Rovinj to a little bay just south of Umag. The forecast said we could expect another bora wind (from the northeast) and this bay is quite sheltered from winds in that direction. We picked up a mooring in the bay and settled down for the evening and night.
When we don’t have the engine on and are not connected to shore power (in a marina) we have a generator that we use to charge the batteries. It stopped working. The fault light said “blocked sea water flow”. This is used for cooling. I eliminated all the straightforward causes and we were left with a fault in the generator itself or a blockage where the sea water comes into the generator through the hull. Checking this would involve going into the water and taking a look with a mask and snorkel. Not really a problem, apart from ……
These cuddly little creatures are commonly known as “fried egg jellyfish” They are quite common in the Mediterranean especially in July - October. They only mildly irritate you when they sting but they DO sting. Also just looking off the port quarter of the boat, I can could 28, yes 28, of them. I conclude that going into the water in not a viable approach, so we will go to Umag the next day and get a service person to look at the generator. We were going to go to Umag anyway to get someone to look at our autopilot and there is a good technician there apparently.
The night is quite rolly with a noticeable swell coming into the bay. We are fairly comfortable all night but in the morning we see that one of the boats that was anchored in the bay has moved. They must have been dragging their anchor and needed to reset it in a different location. Not a great thing to have to do in the dark.
We motor the short distance to Unag and as we are tying up we meet some Americans (Ann and John) who are sailing here with her sister and brother-un-law. Our rolly night had apparently had quite a strong bora and they too had had to move their boat in the middle of the night We were glad that we had paid attention to our pilot book.
We have some wine on board with them later and talk about plans. The problem is that, unusually, we are going to be in bora conditions for three or four days. Jim is unsure, but the weather data and the locals, convince him that moving on is not wise. People who straggled in the next day were wearing their full foul-weather gear and .talked about 25- 30 knot winds.
So we schedule the generator to be looked at and it turns out to need a part replaced. So going into the water with the jellyfish would have been fruitless (and gross and possibly painful). Good decision! But fixing the autopilot will have to wait until the next day.
Alan comes to fix our autopilot and he does a quick confirmation that all it needs is to be re-tuned. This has to be done at sea; so he shows me how to do it. Lori takes a video just in case I forget. I will have a new skill to add to my profile - “autopilot technician”.
Alan seems so capable that we raise another problem with him. Ou boat seems to draw an inordinate amount of power from its batteries. We had confirmed this by having our folks in Vliho fit a new gauge that measure not just the voltage in the batteries but also the current. The numbers were very high (absurdly so) and the Vliho team had spent almost two days trying to track down the problem.
As we are going through the scenarios with him he eliminates possible causes and homes in on the gauge itself - it seems to be reading about ten times too high a value for the current. As he is rubbing his fingers over the screen, a piece of dirt come off. The piece of dirties what we thought was the decimal point!!!! So the gauge is completely off and we will need to have it replaced. This confirms the benefit of having a second disinterested pair of eyes looking at a problem.
Sometime during all this, our head (toilet) stops working. Continuing in my role as diagnostician, I suspect that we have a blocked discharge tube A constipated toilet is not something you can ignore on a boat. So we delay our departure from Umage again and wait for the guys to take a look at it. My diagnosis is correct and they take awayone disgustingly blocked tube and replace it with a shiny new one. Our toilet is now flushing with serious energy.
Finally, we leave Umag and head back down to Pula. It is a quiet trip but we managed to sail a very short part f it before the wind died only to have it pick up again when we got close to Pula and the time to park! But no problems and we get snugged up into a berth with a view.
The view from the back of True Colors
There is not only a view but there is also a soundtrack. Tonight Oliver & Gibonni (very famous in Croatia apparently) are playing in the Colosseum which is used as a venue these days. The music seems to be mostly big ballads but the crowd love them all. It is a great atmosphere.