Day 12 - Fire in the hole

We woke to the sound of the roar of Verney Falls and the drumming of the rain on the deck. I wasn’t in the mood for a leisurely breakfast as I had gotten up at 530am to check the. Battery charge and I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough juice to start the main engines.  When Roman got up we were at 82% so I made the decision to start the engines.  Starboard started right up but Port refused to start.  After monkeying around with it for a half hour I still couldn’t get it to start and I suspected an air lock from my switching around the fuel lines to use the genset tank for our reserve for the run to Rupert.  After cranking it many times and trying to get the air out I tried one last time and I smelled smoke, I opened the engine room hatch and looked in to see flames coming from the port engine.  I grabbed the extinguisher off the wall of the salon, jumped down the hatch and gave it a good long squirt.  It worked exactly as intended, the fire was out in an instant.  

Well that meant a run to Rupert on one engine….a 6+ hour run but at least we didn’t have to worry about running out of fuel as we would only burn 50% with a single engine.  The rain and mist down to the deck continued all day up Grenville channel and into Prince Rupert.  Visibility was down to 1 nm in some places so I had to depend on the radar.  The finest setting is actually good enough to see out wake and boat-killing size logs so I was glad to have it.  I monitored VHF 71 for freighter traffic as we entered the harbour and made our way to the fuel dock. We filled up the tanks with 1,270 litres at northern fuels ($1.23 a litre - crazy cheap) and I was able to maneuver into the adjacent marina with the single engine.  We can hold 1,700 litres of fuel so we actually still had quite a bit of range left. We’re docked now for 2 days and I’ve called and left messages with the local mechanic, hopefully we can get this dealt with tommorrow as we want to head up to the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, Kevin who owns the marina stopped by for a visit and he confirmed that the bears are active and about and also told us about a bay called God’s pocket which has lots of bioluminescence, something I would very much like Patti and Roman to experience as it’s magical. 

It’s laundry, repair and re-provisioning over the next 2 days and Patti also wants me to stop by the hospital to see if they can stitch up my finger which is refusing to heal.  So far we are liking what we have seen of the town and the people are super friendly.  There is a good museum and lots to see and do so we’ll have a busy couple days I’m














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