Simontanium

When we brought Kamalii down from the USA, on the Hawaii to Tonga leg we had a wee mishap (not in any way the fault of the skipper, no, not at all...) which resulted in a main engine exhaust connection exploding. Quite spectacular.

Then fresh-recruit Simon Jenkin duly proceeded to spend several hours in the baking heat of the engine room effecting a repair to get the engine going again. His solution was to fabricate a new joint out of an advanced composite material, Simontanium, which is a hi-tech sandwich of rubber inner-tube, 3M 5200, hose clamps and selected chunks of exhaust hose.

Simontanium is very effective. In fact, up until now I hadn't bothered to replace his fix. Hey, if it ain't broke, then...

But, with the engine out of action for a bit I figured I had better get around to it. So all done; nice shiny new piece of unbelievably bloody expensive 6" wet exhaust hose fitted. The hose clamps even cleaned right up like new. Couldn't save the inner-tube, though...