So, THAT’S what that button is for!

I realized that my days are off, with regards to the subject of these posts, I’m writing about what happened n day 4 of the crossing but writing about it on day 5, so be it, off by one – typical programmers mistake, I’ll run with it.

Woke up this morning to a boat load of frenzied activities. Seemed something was going as planned, hauled my but up to listen come up to speed, as Christine’s translation on what was wrong with the charging of the brand new batteries we had installed was. As I said yesterday the little generator that could, wasn’t and was going to try and sort it out in the day light. Well, Marvin had beat me to it, because the starboard engine wasn’t charging the batteries fast enough. He had changed engines to use the port engine to charge the batteries and then tried the little honda and it overloaded. The 220volt shore power battery charger wasn’t charging! So by all accounts we were down to 1 charging source, the port engine. Solar doesn’t work at night. Checking the shore power, there were no light on it, and the switch was off. Last night when I ran the starboard engine, it put some 60amp hours back, would have thought that the 115amp alternator would do better than that but was still charging none the less. No lights on the charger, not a problem, no incoming power. Start the honda, ahh lights on the charger – all good there. Remembering that there was a green light on an un-marked switch that lights up when running shore power/honda generator – oh that button, yeah thats the hot water heaters, they draw much more than the generator can produce. While putting the “stuff” back in to the compartment with the charger, I accidentally hit the off button so charging ceased for about 5 mins, but that was an easy fix. Nothing was wrong, except a switch for water heaters was on, it is now off.

Some sammiches for lunch, with some really yummy cheddar cheese. Made a tortilla soup with the leftover turkey, came out okay but boiling in the pressure cooker seemed to take away alot of flavor – all tasted good, just needed some pepper or more cilantro.

We saw our first sailboat out here today, it was on the horizon. We were on a port tack, and they must have been on starboard tack, as they showed up on our starboard but were way behind our stern later in the day. Probably 6+ miles away. Ron has also spotted a mast head light that he is watching right now.

Weather continues to be a mystery. Every forecast we see or get, says the wind should be coming from someplace we could sail, but its coming from where we want to go. For example, right now the most recent forecast says it should be coming from 188 @ 13.2kn, but what we see is 220 @ 8kn, so I guess that’s a lot closer then the 180 degree difference earlier today. Hmmm, maybe we’ll get to trust these forecasts sooner than later.

Tonight after dinner the wind and seas had died down so much we decided to motor sail a bit, and head closer to the due west heading. So I started the engine oil/transmission check on the port engine and discovered the heating system repair that was done in turkey was leaking sea water into the engine compartment – no biggie, just a drip here and there. Tried to fix it, they had tighted a hose clamp where there was nothing to tighten it to, just splitting the aluminum hose. Cut a piece off and reattached it slowed the drip significantly, we’ll just keep an eye on it, as we aren’t using the heaters anyway.

It is definitely warming up, on tonight’s watch I will still have a jacket on, but gone are the multiple layers under the jacket. Cool but doesn’t bite through ya.

All it good, played “I’m on a boat” today – smiles on everyone’s faces even with the profanity in the “Lonely Island” version of that song, I love it. I replaced the outdoor speakers with cheapies but have been awesome to have on this trip. The old ones cones were shot, so they made no sound. The favorite thing about those, they were nice and silicone’d in to the boat to prevent leaks, except when the cone acted like a funnel.

Just turned off the noise makers (engine) and stared sailing in 13kn of wind, heading 273 @ 7kn – Lemke you would be proud, not always a beam reach! Using lots of dagger board to get 40degrees off the wind.

Course over ground: 254 Speed over ground: 6.3kn Total miles through water: 610 Miles to destination: 2353 kn if we were a bird.

The grib files are downloaded each night and are reviewed and discussed – the problem is they are not accurate.  The file states that the wind is coming from one direction and we are experiencing something totally different.  Right now we have pretty big seas, steady and strong winds and decent boat speed, but that is supposed to change and often does throughout the day.  A discussion about head usage is always a gross topic, but a necessary conversation.  We have 2 different types of heads on our boat – one is the Vacuflush and the other is a standard pump type head that uses salt/sea water (you pump dry, then wet, then dry, then wet).  I find that if you repeat this process of dry/wet at least 3 times you can not only remove the contents but you can remove the majority of the smell.  However, the pump type head is always going to smell more than the Vacuflush as is uses salt water and does not work as efficiently or have the same sort of “storage”.  Ensuring that everyone is on the same page on proper usage of each head is imperative – it will save you from uncomfortable discussions, smell and worse.

Boys are still trying to catch something – lots of lines out and nothing jumping on the hook.

We awoke to “engine” problems – evidently the engines are not charging the batteries and the crew was up in “arms”.  I explained the problem to Matt who evaluated the situation, discovered the problem, fixed it.  I love that about Matt – he is able to look at a problem head on, think it through and fix it – calmly.    The best thing about the engines running and batteries charging is that we all got to take hot showers – it was the first time since we left the Gran Canarias.  Even though I had to learn to balance my back side against the escape hatch (yes, I was shooting the moon at Flipper) , I was able to wash my hair, shave my legs and refresh my body – it is amazing how much I miss a good shower. Of course, it was turning the water on, then off, then on, then off.  It is hard to clean long hair in these conditions – perhaps a shorter cut may be in order?

We saw our first sail boat today, but it was so far away I could barely make it out.  Although it has only been a few days since we left “civilization” it feels like a lot longer.  Seeing this first sail boat reminded me how “small” and “lonely” we are out here.  Knowing that there are over 500 boats making the same course would give one the impression that we would see more boats – but nooooooooooooo.