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
