Search This Blog

Powered By Blogger

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The People In Wells Were Unbelievably Helpful With More T-Top Repairs ! ! !

Ralph via SAT phone (transcribed)
Make that 3 pipes instead of 2 that bust. We stopped in the town of Wells. The people were unbelievably helpful. In the short period we were here, about an hour and a half, two hours. We got all these people out here helping us and made some quick repairs and we are off.
London by 11 AM tomorrow morning or bust, hopefully not the bust!
We will talk to you later.
God bless you. Bye

3 comments:

  1. Ralph and Bob, have a safe trip and good weather down to London, I'm sure you'll make it okay. Stay safe you guys.

    Rob Ludlam
    Wells Harbour Chandler

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wish you all the best on the (little) rest of your journey! You are awesome, guys! Keep in touch!

    Elin Brimheim Heinesen
    Tórshavn, The Faroe Islands

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know you all know of the big storm out there right now. We were really trying hard to make out London commitment by 11:00. It seems that we will be late as usual. There is a storm out there right now with gale force winds at force 8 and perhaps 9. That would be 50 mph plus. Anyway in our attemp to get to London, we've had a ton of things that kept beating us back. LIke the three hours that we were drifting with the sea anchor out, because our best friend wanted to take a few hours off. Yes, the Suzuki decided she wanted to rest. The first time, she pretended to be out of fuel when she cut herself off. We switched tanks and she started right up. We were traveling offshore, cutting out a tight inside courner of the map. Our Suzuki, cut out a second time, so we drained the filter, thinking that there was water or dirt in the filter. She started again and drove for another ten minutes or so in the roughening water. The boat was really slambing and I was driving, we had to get to London by 11, the day after tomarrow. Suzuki, went dead again, this time I noticed that the dash lights also flickered and stayed off. Now, when we tried to start her, she just layed there. After juggling under the console through all our stuff that we hoped would stay dry (HA HA!) the lights flickered but she kept sleeping. I looked for a long time, moving the wires and stuff around and couldn't find anything wrong. so we decided to go ahead and start the kicker and limp in. The small Suzuki 9.9 wasn't ready to help us, we checked for spark, good. Added a little gas or petrol or benzine (depending what country you are in.)and the most we could get out of her was a chough.

    After a few minutes debatting, the smart thing to do was to notify the coast guard, so if later we needed them, they would be ready. We made some calls to the States and then Ralph found a broken wire. At the same time, the coast guard called to say, that they would send out a small boat with a machinic, that way we would not have to be towed and jepordize our record. The boat started so we called them to tell them not to come, we would be fine.

    Later today, we discovered two broken poles that were completely severed, different from the ones that we had already patched. Another couple or hours behind, although we were lucky to meet a bunch of really cool people in the town of Wells, they helped us alot.

    Tonight, we are stopped because of the gale force 8 storm had caught us and we it is too dangerous, although it was my fault that we stopped, Ralph wanted to keep the media happy and take the chance. Gale force winds are over 50 mph, we had 15 foot breaking waves in 40 mph hour winds before. We made it to Europe, officially completing the crossing although London is the recognized location. The adult responsible thing to do is to wait till safer weather. Tomorrow, the winds will still be really high, but they are supposed to be offshore. If we hug the shoreline, we would be OK. We'll see tomorrow.

    SORRY THAT WE WILL BE LATE TOMORROW IN LONDON!!!!

    Bob Brown

    ReplyDelete