Kaimana - Cruisers helping Cruisers - That's what they do!

We sailed north and west to Kaimana.  This was to be a provision stop and we found this busy port community active and quite well stocked with stores and Mosques. 

We were traveling in company with Murray and Carol (Sv Jams) and our new friends Matt and Annie (Sv Cavalo) whom we had met in Triton Bay.  This young couple, from the US, were avid surfers and we enjoyed their youthful energy.  It was great to see them enjoying the cruising lifestyle.  As with all cruisers…there are good days…then there are those other days when things don’t go as planned.  We all have them…and unfortunately for them, their number came up the morning we departed Kaimana.  Jams and KaijaSong were already underway when we heard Matt on the radio saying they had lost all forward propulsion.  After a brief discussion, we determined that they had neither forward nor reverse.  This sounded all too familiar to us as we had a similar experience some years back sailing to the Galapagos.  In our case, we still had reverse, and it was a matter of the transmission ‘steels and plates’ wearing out.  However, I learned from that experience, that if you lose both forward and reverse, it is more like a case of the ‘damper plate’ failing.  This is the piece of hardware that connects the engine flywheel to the transmission input spline (see picture upper right). 

As it turns out, their engine and ours is the same…a Perkins 4-236 and despite having different transmissions, we at least had a point of reference.  By the end of the day, Matt (with a little assistance from Murray and me…that’s what cruisers do) had  hoisted his 1000 pound engine, unbolted and removed his 400 lb transmission and accessed and removed the damper plate and confirmed that in fact the spline on the damper plate was stripped.   Ok on the best of days with a good Perkins dealer close by, you are looking at a couple of days to get the part needed.  However, we were stuck out in the middle of Indonesia in a small port town miles and miles from any major center, in this case Sorong.  We contacted Wick, who is the cruisers best friend in Sorong who said that he could fly a mechanic down and perhaps jury rig something that might get them close, or fly back with the part and try to effect a repair to keep them going.  All of this news was positive, but time consuming and expensive.  In the back of my mind…I believed that I had a spare damper plate…really???  We had learned over the years…that you almost need a spare yacht to carry all the spares needed to keep your yacht running.  I woke in the night convinced that somewhere in the bowels of our boat I would find this needed spare.  As morning woke, I located an old broken damper plate and with failing memory almost convinced myself that this was what I had imagined…but Kaija, bless her heart, said she had one final ‘secret stash’ location to check…VOILA, EUREKA, she cried and out she came with a brand new damper plate, the correct spacer plate and a set of long bolts to affix all this in place.  Murray picked me up and together we went to share the good news.   Despite my attempts at starting off showing them my old broken damper plate which I offered them, and watching Matt in deep concentration trying to figure out some magic fix to marry it to their broken unit…

I couldn’t contain my excitement for long and pulled out the new damper plate and accessories with a twinkle in my eye happily handed it to Matt.  It was like seeing a kid at Christmas…his eyes lit up and he immediately disappeared into his engine room…only to proclaim minutes later…”IT FITS”.   By days end, the tranny and engine were re-united and it all worked. While we boys were busy being grease monkeys, the girls went shopping.  The market was awesome for fresh fruits and veggies.  Stocked up again, and all parts running smoothly, the morning of December 6 departed for Sorong.