Problems in Tulcea Kherson, Ukraine June 30, 2004 Hi folks, This is our second day in Kherson, a large Ukrainian port in the Dneiper River delta above Crimea. Not much English is spoken here, but people are friendly. I have had time to do some logs and so am sending this out a day or so after my last, and I have my log of the frustrations upon entering the Ukraine half finished. I see the Conservatives did not form the government in Canada, but the Liberals were cut down to a minority government. I have a greater respect for Paul Martin than I had for Jean Chretien, and he should do a good job for Canada. I hope he can root out the corruption that has riddled the Liberals. All is well with us. Aubrey *************************************************************************** Problems in Tulcea In Tulcea next day we were awakened with a hail at 0715 May 2, and asked to shift our mooring as a large 500 foot river hotel ship loomed over us waiting to extend its lines across our location. We cast off our lines, and as we were oriented with our bows downstream, easily backed out with our reverse prop pulling our stern out to port. We missed the ship astern of us by a few feet, and were out into mid stream, clear of the mooring. When I attempted to go ahead, I seemed not to have any propulsion. Trying astern again I did not feel any movement! Our gears were not engaging! I immediately thought that the gear coupling had separated and asked Judy to check if the gear linkage was faulty. Judy emptied the port cockpit locker and climbed in, to see that the linkage was OK, but the shaft was not turning. It was separated from the transmission! We had no power! We were helplessly drifting downstream in a three knot current, sliding towards the hotel ship at the bend of the river in Tulcea. We needed to get control of the situation and no rescue vessels were around, and of course we did not have the language skills to ask for help here in Romania on VHF. We then rapidly launched Sprite, and I brought it around to our port side and secured a line to Veleda’s midships and stern for a side tow. We now had some control of Veleda and were able to manouevre her away from the sides of the large hotel ship. We still had to get alongside somewhere. The ambulance boat that we were originally to have moored to had an officer who spoke some English, and I indicated we had no transmission and would use our dinghy to come alongside. OK, he was ready for us. Judy was at the helm, and I was in Sprite giving Veleda forward propulsion. However, Judy is quite uncomfortable in maneuvering Veleda in close quarters, especially in a three knot river current, so we switched roles. I hopped up on Veleda and Judy went into Sprite. I told her not to worry about steering Sprite but just to respond to my engine orders of ahead, neutral, and astern, and I would steer Veleda as necessary to effect a down current landing alongside the ambulance boat on our starboard side. It actually worked quite well. We were alongside by 0740, watched by crew and passengers of the hotel boat However, I had noticed while in Sprite that our automatic bilge pump was coming on frequently and pumping water overboard! A lot of water must be coming in around the shaft. When we were secured alongside the ambulance boat, we turned our attention to this leak. We emptied the starboard cockpit locker and Judy climbed down into it to see that our shaft had separated completely and shot out the stern tube. We had a one inch (25mm) hole in our stern, gushing in water! Our electric bilge pump was not enough to keep the water level down, and it was rising dangerously. Unfortunately our manual bilge pump does not work, and we were sinking! Judy was making like the Little Dutch Boy, sticking her hand over the hole to block the flow, hoping our bilge pump would be sufficient to deal with the water already aboard. I passed Judy a wooden plug to insert into the opening. It was too long to fit in the restricted space! I had to saw it off a bit and shave it down with a ship’s knife to get it to fit. Finally Judy had the plug tapped into the hole, stopping the flood. Now What? The chap on the ambulance boat was a Frontier Police officer who spoke some English. Judy went off with him to one of the several ship yards to see if they could help us. Before they left, I checked with a boat hook and identified that the shaft and propeller were still hanging out of the cutlass bearing (a bracket outside of the hull supporting the prop shaft). The shaft had a zinc anode clasped forward of the bearing and this saved it from total separation (I thought). I stayed on board to monitor our plug and any residual leakage. Judy returned an hour later with Vali, a marine engineer from the Scut shipyard, to evaluate the problem. He indicated a tug would be down in a couple of hours to tow us up to their yard and deal with the problem. We relaxed for a bit and had breakfast, until a large barge tow boat showed up to take us downstream to their shipyard. The crew spoke no English. We had no idea of how they wished to take us away from our mooring, and it was a hairy situation as they towed us out with us frantically fending off from the nearby boats. Then they opened up and towed us at about six to eight knots through the water, far faster than I would have preferred about two miles downstream to their boatyard. Getting alongside was another problem! They were used to steel barges and steel ships, not small fiberglass sailboats which crush easily! We fended ourselves off alongside a barge, rafted off two other barges, with a small opening ahead between three tow boats, not enough room to get through. We had no idea where they wanted to locate us in this maze of barges, tow boats and small tour boats, all steel! Nobody spoke English and Vali was nowhere to be seen. A tow boat started to shift a raft of three boats outboard, increasing the opening ahead of us into a camber occupied by a 50 steel foot tour boat. No room for us unless that boat shifted. Finally they moved that boat out and indicated we were to pull ourselves inside. Ooo Kaay, which way should our bow be? No response. Someone on shore was trying to indicate the depth available, and it was questioned whether we had enough depth to go alongside the quay. We thought we should and indicated to go for it. Finally we were shoe-horned into this narrow opening and alongside the jetty. Vali and half a dozen workers scrambled over poor Veleda to try to assess what needed to be done. Then I realized we had lost our shaft and prop!!! Damn, Damn, Damn !!! I should have secured it with a line before we were towed at full speed to the boat yard! We just lost over $700.00 worth of shaft and our new (in 2002) 16x14 inch RH propeller!!! We now needed a new shaft, a new propeller, and to our surprise, a new transmission coupling. Fortunately we still had our smaller original 14 x 12 RH propeller and thought they would order a new shaft and coupling. No, they could manufacture both. They measured the length for the shaft and looked with distain at the transmission coupling that was still attached. It was the original coupling which they said was inadequate. It held the shaft with just two set screws and a key going in to a key way. The key makes the shaft rotate with the transmission, but does not hold the shaft from after motion when in reverse. The two set screws are the only mechanisms to hold the shaft to the transmission coupling. They had failed and the shaft slipped out when in reverse. Possibly when we were aground in the marshy area going around that dredge barge, too much reverse thrust weakened the hold of the set screws and allowed the shaft to slip out next time reverse was needed. Vali indicated the set screws were not a good system to hold the shaft, and said they would fabricate a new transmission coupling for us. This coupling would have room inside for a threaded shaft with a nut and the nut would have a pin running through nut and shaft to prevent it from unscrewing and ever separating. We had this problem before in Palma, Mallorca (read log #19h when we were in Palma). To assess the length of the shaft we did not have to be hauled out. Instead they just had a mobile truck crane lift our stern up so the stern tube was clear of the water, and did the measurements. However we had to wait for three days before all the fabrication and installation was completed. In the meantime, we were against a rusty steel dock with swells cast up by passing barges and ships, a most uncomfortable situation. Vali and his wife Gabi, a high school teacher of English, took us out for drinks one night, and we had them over for supper another. A very nice young couple. Vali took us over town several times as we tried to get from our bank the money to pay the repair costs, as we could not just use our Visa credit card. Finally we were able to contact our bank manager at the CIBC in Toronto, Jim King, who was quite helpful in sending the equivalent amount in US dollars ($550.00) through Western Union. It took four phone calls because of screwups as such must be sent by an individual, not a bank or commercial outlet.(?) This had to be taken care of on Friday as the bank in Canada would be closed until Monday (Murphy’s Law), and there is a seven hour time difference. Lots of fun! While over town with Vali, we met Niko, the Frontier Police officer who befriended us earlier, and arranged for him to visit with us. He took us over town for the final arrangement with Western Union to get the money. As it was, when the lady in the post office finally indicated the money came through, she counted it out in Romanian Lei to an amount which did not compute. Niko counted and recounted and discovered that the lady had given us 10,000,000 Lei too much! We should have received 16,000,000 Lei and she gave us 26,000,000 Lei. We brought this to her attention and returned it to her. However we were still 50 Lei short of what we needed, between what we already had and what the bank sent us. We would have to go to a bankomat to get more Lei out. Damn! It would cost more in bank charges than what we needed. Rather than just getting out the amount needed (as we hoped to leave next day and did not want to have any extra Romanian Lei with us) we decided (I did) to get a reasonable amount extra out and buy several bottles of good Romanian wines to take with us. Mmmmm! Next day, June 5th, we paid the 19,500,000 Lei (about $800.00 Cdn) for three nights alongside with electricity and water, the new shaft (with our old propeller), coupling and installation (plus 20 litres of diesel thrown in). Vali assured us the work was guaranteed for a year and it should last us indefinitely. We left at 0945 after they jockeyed a few tow boats out of the way, and checked out reverse and forward thrusts of the engine and the drip free Teflon packing we had them install, before heading upstream to the barge near the Immigration and Customs building to check out of Romania for the Ukraine. We arrived there at 1030, but had to wait until 1330 before the officials came to check us out. No problem, as they were pleasant and wished us a good trip. We immediately departed upstream to the Chilia Channel and downstream, 20 miles to Ismail in Ukraine where many more problems were to arise! Next log