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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 |
English
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