Fri, 3 Jan 2003
Wings' engine is fixed and we're back in business (cruising business that is). We gave the engine a good test by motoring up the Brisbane River to the center of the city of Brisbane where we tied to a piling mooring off the Botanical Garden, and here is where we spent New Year's Eve. The fireworks were great, the city is nice, (clean and modern, and slower paced than Sydney), the mooring is cheap, and we are having fun being tourists. We've been shopping, eating out, and partying. We watched the fireworks from the Southbank Park, along with about 30,000 other people, we've been for walks along both sides of the river, and last night we went to the "ZOO", a local night-club to listen to live music, and heard Ember Swift, a jazz-punk-gypsy canadian heavy into politics. It was great.
So we are cruising again. We'll spent a few more days in Brisbane, then go to Manly followed by a cruise to the islands in Moreton Bay. The weather in Queensland is great, quite a bit hotter than Sydney, but still cooler and less humid than the Solomon Islands. In February we'll be back at Scarborough and we're planning a visit to New Zealand and the US in Feb and March before taking off to the north to resume our cruise towards Hong Kong.
Just a word about the engine: We had the injectors rebuilt and this solved the serious problem we had last year which caused us to abort out cruise and return to Australia. We had had a problem with water getting into the fuel tanks, and this caused injector damage resulting in one cylinder not firing so the unburned fuel was getting past the rings into the oil sump. After putting in the new injectors, and one more oil change, the oil dilution was gone, as was the blue smoke out the back and the diesel slick in the exhaust. We're happy with this outcome. Since the eastern part of the Solomon Islands Just got devastated by Cyclone Zoe we are glad we made the decision to leave rather than try to fix the problem there.
Fred & Judy