Tuesday 3rd day 4

The higher fuel consumption and slight vibration mystery has been cleared up. 

The pic above is of the starboard propellor and rudder.  Unfortunately a Chinese fishing net has decided to tag along for the ride. 

At lunchtime today the conditions were safe enough for us to stop the boat, go out onto the duckboard and put the afore mentioned camera and 3m selfie stick underneath the water and have a look and would you believe it we are trailing what's left of a fishing net.  Now real surprise there!

The sea conditions are not safe enough to go diving down under a 30+ tonne boat bobbing up and down in 1-2m swell so that is going to have to wait.  In the meantime we are now running the port engine at 1800rpm (30lph) and the starboard just in gear (600rpm) to lube the shaft.  With this set up the vibration has stopped and we are burning 32lph at an average speed of 7kts.

As for the fuel contamination, the port side which had the major problem yesterday is looking pretty still after I removed the crap and the fuel polishing system has been working overtime.  

As for the starboard side, that was ok yesterday but I had to remove some crap from that filter today.  Not as much as the port but still there.  At this stage I still don't know if it was the left over from China diesel or if was the Hong Kong diesel.  Fingers crossed it was the Chinese.

We have 6 x 210lt blue plastic drums with Hong Kong diesel on the deck so I am thinking about pumping them in when the main tanks need topping up and see if the problem continues.

As for today the weather has been nice and sunny and very warm/humid outside.  Thankfully the alternators are producing plenty of charge to the batteries and we have the absolute luxury of sitting inside a fully air conditioned boat, bliss!

Seas have been reducing and are forecast to reduce to less than 1m later tomorrow so hopefully we can dive down and clear the pesky net we picked up.