Voyage to Verde Islands - Day 5
Stargazer of Southampton
Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)
Thu 16 Dec 2010 08:31
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16:12.10, 20:18.23N 20:27.88W
Had a nice 'day off' yesterday - the winds were
light but enough to sail so we could sit on the front of the boat reading as the
water and boat were flat. The wind has been a bit variable and light but
we have managed to sail all the way through the night and keep on our
course. It's amazing what the boat can do when the sea's are flat - we had
7 knots of wind and were sailing at almost 5 knots which isn't bad, luckily we
are going almost upwind - we can do this much faster in light airs than we can
go downwind
More Dolphins yesterday afternoon - think that they
were hunting as they were leaping out of the water into the air, they were
clearly busy as not at all interested in the boat, we watched them for a while -
assume that they had found a shoal of fish or something, when they leapt into
the air they got at least 2 metres clear of the water and came down with a
terrific splash. Still no whale sightings though.
Less enjoyable was that I found late yesterday
afternoon that our engine has sprung an oil leak, it always leaked a little bit
as old diesels do so we had to top up every 60 hours or so, but yesterdays was
more so. We spent a hot couple of hours having to mop up oil from the
bilges and clean up the engine to see where the leak was. Adam has
tightened all of the bolts as much as he can - we wonder if the heat can cause
this when things expand since John who we talk to on VHF also spent
yesterday trying to trace the source of pools of oil under his engine and had to
tighten a couple of bolts - some co-incidence. Adam thinks he has reduced
the leak down but it was 11pm when he finished looking at it last night so
we'll have another look today in the daylight. We have spare oil for
topping up and if the wind stays between 7 and 10 knots that we have right now
then we can keep on sailing so won't need to run it, if we do - it is just a
case of watching it very closely.
Another warm and clear day today.
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