Sunday, February 21, 2010, Manaus Brazil

While Hammon prepares to grill us a couple of burgers, I thought I had better write something before Patricia and Lena send abusive language my way.  Here goes as a brief history of our last few months; beginning, in Dunedin, NZ.

I told Patricia that I would be gone a couple of weeks, I was going to NZ to look at a Long Liner fishing boat built in Japan.  Well, 6 months later she sees me in Panama when she and Lena joins us as replacement crew.  Tobie came to NZ to help ready the vessel for the trip home and made the passage to the Pacific side of Panama.

The boat I went to look at in NZ did not survey out as I had hoped and I looked at another in Nelson, NZ and it did not survey out either.  I was about to come home, when a captain friend of mine in Nelson told me of a smaller Japanese boat in Dunedin.  So Hammon and I flew down to look and it surveyed out very well.  The main engine had very low hours on it and the engine room was completely Yanmar.  If you don’t know Yanmar engines, they will run forever and are very economical to operate.

We looked at the boat out of the water and inside and out, top to bottom and had a second opinion from a surveyor from Auckland.  The owner had recently had a heart attack and a stint installed in his heart.  So God put us together and it was a win/win deal for both of us as we came to a deal and closing.

I had new electronics installed, and a water maker in NZ and a few other things to make us feel comfortable crossing the Pacific.  After this process, we set out from Dunedin on the south part of the South Island of NZ to Napier; on the north part of the North Island.  It was a good shake down cruises and we felt comfortable for the rest of the passage.

It was winter when we left NZ and the seas were rather on the rough side all the way to Tahiti.  But first, we went from Napier, NZ to Raratonga, Cook Island.  We fly a Cook Island flag and I wanted to see our homeport; Avaitu.  We spent a couple of weeks there adjusting and fixing and sight seeing the island.

From Raratonga we headed for Papetta , Tahiti.  And believe me Tahiti is not what you would expect.  It is a small industrial, dirty island that is way overpopulated. We got hung up there because we had problems with our starboard generator motor.  We were there for one month until I decided to trust God and go across the Pacific with only one generator.  If we had problems with the one we could take parts from one to the other.  So it was not a very drastic decision but none the less, it is a long way across the Pacific.  When you go from Tahiti to Panama it is a long 22 day trip and when you are in the middle you are 11 days from land in any direction.  So you have to be careful and pray that the motors run and the vessel operates as it is supposed to.  Just about 10 days out from Tahiti the main engine did indeed stop suddenly and we all said , “oh no!”.  Hammon changed the fuel filters and she fired back up and we didn’t have any more problems the rest of the way, until about 100 miles north of Aruba when the electronics gave us problems and we had to go into Aruba for repairs of 3 days.  It was a good little short stop and R/R.

I always wanted to see the Panama Canal; I never thought that someday I would actually drive a boat through the locks.  It is a wonderful piece of engineering and has only been shut down a couple of days since it’s beginning. Lena took a gazillion pictures and I hope she includes some in this writing.

From Panama across the north coast of South America, we had a head on current of about 3 knots and our progress was slowed considerably all the way to the mouth of the Amazon and then we had the current of the river to contend with.

We decided to enter the river at the north entrance of Macapa and clear customs there.  It was about 0300 hrs. in the morning when we arrived and we all were very tired.  I looked on the chart and saw an anchorage, we found it and dropped anchor and got some sleep.  Early next morning, I called in to Harbor Control and told of our arrival and intentions.  The Harbor Master told me to leave this anchorage because it is a very dangerous place.

 We found out later that we anchored in the exact same place where pirates killed Sir Peter Blake.  We relocated to a safer anchorage and waited.  We waited for two days for customs to come and clear us.  I telephone a friend of mine and he told me of a ship agent there that would help us.  I called him and he arrived by water taxi and he was very “in the know” and got us cleared right away.  In fact, Sampson, our agent was also, Peter Blakes’ agent and arrived to Peter’s boat 20 minutes before he died of gunshot wounds.  It was almost surreal to be talking to Sampson about the events that took place.  I had dedicated our passage from New Zealand to Manaus Brazil to Sir Peter Blake before we left NZ, because Peter was New Zealand’s favorite son.  Everyone in Brazil says, “it was the shot that was heard around the world.”  The New Zealanders, when we told them where we were going, “said oh no, we would never go there”.

 Anyway we are here in Manaus, Brazil and have been here for about 4 months working on REVIVAL.  We are trying to make an ex-fishing vessel into a humanitarian vessel.  And in doing so, make it more livable and by enlarging the aft deck, we have doubled our storage capacity.  Installed a new table in galley, new steps to bridge deck and wood that is legal from Brazil on the floors.  We stripped the ceiling with wood and put new varnish coating through out and new paint on bulkheads and ceiling.  It looks like a new vessel on the inside…….. The outside needs painting and we are waiting on another shipyard to come and give us a price on sandblasting and painting with two-part epoxy paint.  We are in the process of rebuilding the generator motor that we had trouble with in Tahiti, and just generally making the vessel more user friendly for western people.

We currently are in the process of donating a drilling rig to YWAM Brazil and we are partnering with Furagua, Mozambique and sending down a Failing Jed A reverse circulation drilling rig, an air compressor, a 1,000 feet of drill pipe, and various drill bits and stabilizers. I will update this as the events unfold.  

That’s about it for now, thanks for tuning in and all your prayers and support.  We do need both…

Edral H. Adams