Biscay Day 2

Akibbon
Richard & Helen Morris
Sun 24 Jun 2007 11:00

Day 2 dawned wet, cold, overcast and even rougher seas! What was this about sometimes having to motor all the way across Biscay??? Neither of us had had much sleep and even making a cup of tea was a challenge! The day passed in ever strengthening winds and bigger seas.  At times the boat was more akin to a submarine with the volumes of water being hurled over the deck.  The boat itself was fine although the catch on the anchor locker came loose forcing Richard up onto the foredeck to secure it, not a fun game and he came back to the cockpit somewhat wet. 

Later in the day we noticed a pigeon circling us and after several abortive attempts he finally crash landed in the cockpit, totally exhausted.  He/she was initially named Sidney Pigeon but this was soon changed to Pooey Pigeon – I dunno what he’d been eating!!!

 

 Pooey

 

As it was so rough and wet we put him in an old folding crate and covered it with a towel so that he had a little protection and after a while he recovered enough to drink some water.

 

During the night the gas alarm came on and on investigating this Richard discovered that the automatic bilge pump had fused (yes it had been checked before we left) and the bilges were rather full of water. Having manually pumped this water away we then noticed that the fridge wasn’t working and discovered sadly that the bilge water had managed to make its way into the compressor locker and totally immersed the compressor – oh the joys of sailing! The water in the bilges was entering the boat via the chainplates on deck which need to be resealed – yet another job!

 

24hr distance run 113.62nM   Cumulative total  579.88nM