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.