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Kjell O. Stave

 

Friday the 13'th.

                                                    

        Coming home from dinner in Paul and Andreas boat Last night i had just gotten the dingy engine going and decided not to sit down because the sides were wet of rain when i was reminded of friday the 13'th and the good old saying "Never stand up in a small Boat". Of course i fell in the water and if someone would have seen me they would probably still be laughing. What a fall, i lost balance and twisted the only thing i was holding on to, the throttle. The engine speed up and i did a 360 backwards and landed in the water. Still holding on to the trottle i finally twisted it the right way and got into the dingy again, soaked but happy not to be injured by the spinning propellar.  Well enyhow this reminded me of my friday the 13'th.

     The day was fine and we had a great sunset. We swam around in the sunset taking photoes and having fun. It was not until after sunset when i went to the gally to make us some supper that the trouble began. I have an alcohol burner for a stove. It is easy to operate, i fill alcohol in a sponge like thing and light it. From time to time i have to refill and this is what i was doing tooday, the right burner would not burn good so i put it out (i thought) and started to fill more alcohol. Well, the burner was somehow still burning so while i was funneling down alcohol from a 4 liter can the funnel caught fire. I managed to give the 4 liter can to Tim without setting the whole thing on fire but the funnel that still had over half a litre inside was in flames and when moving that to the sink it dropped small firebombs all over my kitchen and pretty soon the whole thing was on fire. I quickly grabbed the fire exctinguisher (while Tim grabbed the camera) but waited for an eternity, at least two seconds before i decided it was the right thing to do. Putting out the fire went well but cleaning up the mess was worse. Even though i tryed to be carful with the extinguisher we still had to clean for over two houers on less than two spuare meters of space.

     After two houers of cleaning it was getting kind of late and we were not very hungry for food anymore but a cold beer would doo just fine so we headed to the marina bar. The marina bar is new and always packed. The beers are almost cheap for Tahiti here since it is only 4 dollars and i could not get off the boat fast enought to get there and relax for a bit. Both me and Tim were agitated (because we had to work and were starved) so when the bar turned out to be closed we almost lost it.

 

     Any lessons learnt?,      well, Comon senese would have been nice to have, Never stand up in a small boat, dont play with fire and  Never  take any chances on friday the 13'th...

 

 

Aftermath:  A powder fire extinguisher has a special formulated powder inside that kills all kinds of fires. Unfortunatly the powder also sticks to electrical material and makes it corrode very, very fast. If you ever use an extinguisher like this at home or in youer boat you must clean all the electrics extremly well. I still dont know how much damage the powder dust has made to my boat but hopfully it is not too bad. Two days after the accdident my regulator for the solar panels started smoking and i had to open it up and clean out powder. 

Kjell O. Stave

 

 

 

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