Sweetness. With the exception of about 30 minutes the spinnaker has been flying and dragging us across the ocean with the waves. The sun even made and appearance for a bit, the temperature is still warming up, butter is still not melting.
We snuffed the spinnaker for an oncoming rain shower, looked like we had already seen the increase in wind speed, but to be safe stuffed it in the sock and waited till the showers were just past us. Then launched it again. Its holding nicely as the waves are a bit more organized today.
Ran the Honda to top up the batteries over night and fill up the fresh water tanks at the same time. Today enough sun came out to keep the batteries charged while we run the inverter for the computers and auto-pilot. With the water maker and the auto-pilot our electrical budget was over 30+ amps going out of the batteries. The SSB only added another chunk of power during the transmission.
Still looking like a midnight arrival. Ugh. Well to be fair we didn’t even try to time this arrival when we left, we just left when we were ready as its 500 miles and there are lots of variables. Could be 10 PM if we could surf it all the way there, but even 10 PM is dark.
One piece of bad news, the starboard starter key that was sticking is no longer sticking. Well the ‘not sticking’ part with the glow plugs enabled is good news, the bad news is its not staying in the ‘ON’ position, thus the engine runs but the gauges and lights to the tack are not staying enabled. Feels like some plastic inside the turning mechanism has taken a holiday. Wondering if the ‘old one’ in the spare parts bin works better, tho there was a reason I replaced it.
Have spotted land and the obligatory ‘Land Ho’ was announced.
Cheers [realtime]
At 3/12/2019 @ 11:14 PM UTC Our position: 33°56.28’S, 078°30.81’W Traveling 6.4 heading 320T
Google says we are here www.google.com/maps/place/-33.93800,-78.51350