Perkins/Cummins/Gardner Comparison

Just remembered another Gardner boat.

The "Heduru" was the PNG Government mobile health boat travelling to remote areas. A good mate of mine bought it to get into the charter fishing tour game. 

It was powered by a big Gardner 8L3B with a Gardner 6LX auxilliary. Anyhow, I flew up to Port Moresby to pick up the boat and take it around the tip to Lae on the North Coast. I had with me the owner's 19 year old son in his second year of Marine Engineering at the college in Tasmania. The pommy Harbour Master was the original officious prick and refused to allow me to take the boat because it had a survey under its old government ownership but he had not received a civil ownership survey.

Just after midnight the two of us cranked up the Gardner and proceeded to sea without lights (until we cleared the harbour) into really crap weather. The radar was not working and the beam waves were so big that the auto pilot was hopeless. Hand steering into the blackness I had to lay off towards the South Pacific to avoid the continuous reef along the Papuan Coast. Darren was good for his age in the engine room but couldn't steer for s...t so by daylight my eyeballs were hanging out and he could roughly hold a heading if he could see the horizon.

The Gardner got us there eventually, stopping each night in a post-card lagoon behind a reef.. The 8L3B is a big engine standing up to your chest.

A couple of months later I flew up to take "Heduru" on its first charter - a game fishing show for Channel 7 Australia with the usual bouncing off the walls fishing program presenter. What a wonderful trip, all the way down the North coast to the Trobriand Islands and back calling into villages on river mouths and going for black and spotted bass While we were anchored  I was able to get away from the pain in the arse film crew and do some fishing as well. We got sick of barbecued crayfish that the villagers brought us at each river mouth night anchorage.

 

A hard life but someone has to do it. The film star presenter and his experienced mates were slow off the mark and my amateur efforts caught both first black and spotted bass. Old mate and his camera crew came zipping across in their dory, took my fish and hooked it on his line for the final landing recreation with much yobbo shouting from all and sundry for the camera.

 
 

Believe it or not ! .......guy up the road from here found one of the 8L3 s from the Mirama ( maybe) at an old sawmill at Esk ,motor was in pieces spread over five acres ........he took all the bits back to his place ,and reassembled the motor and got it going well enough to sell it ..........the unbelieve able part was the motor was reasembled and run in his loungeroom.........actually the loungeroom of an old house behind is current house ...but still impressive .

 
Here is a start up on an 8L3 like the engine in "Heduru".



 

 

The 4LW in the Harman was supposly fitted new from a box by the Soil Consrvation ........and absolutely factory original down to the hand pump to change the oil .........I tried to sell it ,lots of lookers,lots of BS talkers ,but no one to buy it ......and you could see it working .........anyhoo ,my hands started to seize up at the end ,so I just walked away and left the crane in the yard.........Last time I went past ,its still there, maybe .