The Steamtug Blog

(Cmon, sing the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song with me…) Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip, that started from the Gee-long port, upon a tiny ship. The engine started running rough, the big end bearing got hot, if not for the well stocked beer fridge, the skipper would’ve been shot!

It was a mate’s bucks party, and the cunning plan was to sail Adaqua to Melbourne’s docklands marina, cruise down the Yarra river with lunch at a fancy pub in Williamstown before partying slowly back, taking in the sights along the way. But things didn’t quite go as planned….

I finished work early and got the ship prepared before Jamie and Thomas finished work and arrived, loaded up a couple of pizzas, and cast off. The weather had been predicted to throw 25 – 30 knot SW winds at us. The direction is ok, because it’s behind, but the wind strength would make conditions a little tricky, and probably mean that our resident robot autopilot Fred, would crack it and we would have to hand steer all the way, which is tricky with a beer in your other hand. Fortunately the reliable weather man got it wrong, and we steamed out of Geelong into a calm sea and setting sun after a warm farewell to the last day of winter. It doesn’t get better than this!

Rub-a-dub dub… 3 men in a tub.

The light of the big silvery moon, the second one for the month making it a “blue moon” shone above as we plotted out course. There is a big mussel farm just past Point Richards, and I was pre-occupied with trying to see the tiny blinking light marking its location. I had it marked on my chart, and was confident we were steering directly towards the Eastern most corner, using it as a waypoint before adjusting our course for Pt Gellibrand off Williamstown. But I had some concerns because a there was a yacht we were chasing, and finally caught, about 400metres to the West of us making me nervous. Those rich yacht blokes have lots of fancy electronics, and are much smarter than me. Surely he knows there is the mussel farm coming up, and if I think I’m sailing to the edge, he would be heading right for it. Then the next time I looked, and he had passed on a funny bearing across our stern and aimed much more to the East. I said to my crew… he probably knocked his stubby over on the chart table, and while wiping off the split beer noticed the mussel farm, and made a radical last minute course change. Ha….

Sitting happily on the top deck slowly sipping our beer, watching the waves pass by, it was very pleasant. I have always said, the sea could be the best place in the world, or the worst! And luckily we were experiencing the former with high expectations of the fun and frivolity the weekend ahead was going to yield. But… (there is always a “but” in these stories…) things were about to change for the worse.

3 hours into a 5 hour trip, and we were sitting on the top deck enjoying the scenery as the big city buildings in front of us grew larger, and the noisy burble of the diesel exhaust had blended into our hearing so that we hardly noticed the constant drone anymore, until….. the pitch changed suddenly! Not the mussel farm? What could it be? We all flew down below to hear the engine laboring along with zero oil pressure and sounding like a Cliff and Bunting chaff cutter. Tom ripped open the engine hatch as I knocked it back to idle and unloaded the engine. It sounded in pain, so I cut the fuel and the engine quickly stopped letting out a last dying bang as it suddenly ceased. We opened the oil filled cap and smoke filled the cabin… hmmm this is not looking good. Next we poured in 5 litres of fresh oil and tried the starter. Nothing happened. We got the big bar onto the crankshaft, but she was locked solid!!! Oh damn…. And as the wind that was following us suddenly made itself known, the boat turned sideways and the little half metre waves rocked us like a cork in the bath making things very uncomfortable. Jamie assessed the situation and said… I thought this weekend was going to be like the movie “Bachelor Party”, but it’s turning out more like, “The Hangover III, at sea!”

We fiddled with this… then that, scratched our heads and balls, checked the number for the coast guard on my phone, then remembered I was with Vodafone and was not surprised to see I had no signal. The next best option, was to call “HELP!!!!” to harbor control on the marine radio. A good mate in Melbourne owns and runs a cruise boat in Melbourne, and my phone started ringing with him trying to call me as soon as I had announced our peril. Unfortunately I was unable to get enough reception to answer.

The big police launch was dispatched from Williamstown and they called us for our position. “2 nautical miles off Point Cook” was my answer. They then asked me if we had any fuel on board. “Is 250 litres of diesel enough?” I replied thinking what a dumb question, but I guess in there business maybe it wasn’t as dumb as some boat owners. They told me to ensure all crew had their life jackets on, and prepare a red hand held flare to mark our location. I looked at the crew as the boat rocked side to side sliding the dishes around in the sink. Tom had gone to bed feeling sick, and Jamie was throwing up out the cabin doorway.

I prepared a red flare, but in my quest to always save money… (he he he…) I fished around in the bottom of the safety cabinet and pulled out one of the old, expired flares… after all, I didn’t want to waste one of my good, new ones! With the police about 3 miles away, they said to try the flare. But flares cost money… so I put the fancy torch that Goofa brought for me on ebay last year, out the door on strobe mode. It has a 1 watt cree LED and would blind Ray Charles! The cops called back, yep… they could see my torch 3 miles away and lined us up.

Jamie was lying on the settee on the port side of the pilot house, above the open engine hatches which we hadn’t put back since the accident. A group of bigger than normal waves caught the side of the ship and first, the scotch bottle got thrown on the deck, then the tele broke loose again… still not secured properly after breaking the window and nearly falling into Bass Strait (see blog entry before…). The poor little tele, it’s an antique left to me by my dear departed grandmother, slid forwards launching it into space towards the engine room. Quick as a flash, Jamie lurched out and followed it down into the engine top! Oh no!!!!! He has probably broken a rib on the rocker cover, or busted his knee on the injector pump, but no… he rolled over and safely put the tele on the pilot house deck next to the rolling scotch bottle and got up, unharmed! Wow…. That was it. I put the anchor out to stabilise the boat against the rocking sea and waited for the police launch to arrive.

I attached a rope from the launch to Adaqua’s Sampson post on the foredeck, securing it quickly with 3 half hitches, and off we went. A strange whurring noise came from the engine room. I had never heard that noise before. Was it the wind generator? No… We looked into the engine room, which now had the covers back on to keep Jamie out, and noticed the propeller shaft spinning around with the ship’s movement. After about 30 minutes, another small launch came along side the police boat and they stopped as Jamie and I watched as they passed something across, then the big burly copper jumped on the little launch and came around behind to us. As we stood in the pilot house companionway, the big copper stood on deck holding jerry can of fuel and asked what the problem was. When we explained, he shook his head and confessed “I was hoping it would only be something minor”…. Like we weren’t???

As I looked up at the light from the big silvery “blue” moon, and was thinking it’s the voodoo from the second moon within the month, all I could hear was Thomas lying in his bunk aft and singing the chant “Your going home in the back of a police boat… ” They deposited us safely on the old Port Authority workshops pier in Williamstown. I am a member of the Maritime Heritage association, and we have set up a maritime museum right next to this, and a little bar called the pirates tavern next door. So I knew this place well, coming here for meetings. The big burly copper told us to undo the tow line. But it had pulled itself so tight, Jamie could not get it undone. So  the junior copper came aboard and said to Jamie “So what’s your position on this ship?” Jamie just looked up and said “I’m Gilligan”. So he has been entered in the cops log as Gilligan! The junior cop tried to get the line off too. Someone suggested we cut it off… “Is that your rope, or ours?” When they established the rope was theirs, then cutting was not an option. Ha… So a screwdriver was called for, then the big burly copper from the aft deck of the launch called out “You’ve got a 45 caliber side arm on ya hip… just shoot the bloody thing off!” We all cracked up laughing as the screw driver finally loosened the rope successfully.

Now Tom’s dad was the last chief engineer on the Esso Gippsland; a well known oil tanker from the golden age of shipping. (See the photo? We found the bell from that ship in the antique shop in Williamstown! How bazaar?) Tom had stolen from his dad’s old overalls, this Velcro badge that said “Chief Engineer” and since I was wearing my navy issue jumper, and the only one on board who had worked as a marine engineer, Tom jokingly stuck the badge to my jumper which was funny at the start of the trip.

The big burly copper wanted to come aboard and see this engine. He came in, asked lots of dumb questions, then announced that he was a marine engineer and knew everything about engines and boats. He looked down at the sad engine, then spied one of my battery terminals. “Ha! There is the problem. You’ve got corrosion on your battery terminals. If you clean those, you will find the engine will start no problem tomorrow morning” we told him it was seized. “Oh, you can’t turn this engine over with a shifter, if you don’t have at least a 3’ bar, you will never turn it. Nope… battery terminals. Get them cleaned and all will be ok.” He said as he looked, puzzled at my chief engineers badge. We all agreed.. Yes sir, battery terminals. That must be the problem… thanks for your help. As he left, we all thought “what a dick…” Jamie chirped in “What kind of marine engineer leaves a job like that to become a water policeman?” and all Thomas could say was, “You know.. tomorrow I’m cleaning those damn battery terminals just to prove how ridiculous a statement that was!” All I could say was “Good night boys”. If only that copper had known he was talking to a marine engineer, a marine fitter and an auto electrician…. we were grateful to be safely moored in harbor anyway. And as sleep began to fill my eyes, I could hear Tom shout out from his bunk, “I have never been so happy to be picked up by the cops!”

The next morning, we cooked up our breakfast, then sat to contemplate the situation. The boys looked at me, and realising how quiet I was, carefully asked me “So what are we going to do about this?” I just looked up, smiled and said “Jamie, get me a beer! I refuse to let this spoil our weekend!”