01.40S 91.05W Friday 7th March – 22.15 ‘leg
time’ (one hour behind local time) and the night is black black black
with no moon until 5.30am tomorrow………we sadly hoisted both
anchors at 11.45 local time and motored out of what I would surely describe as
one of the seven wonders of the world – if not the eighth! Zippy finally
sorted out their problems too and set of three hours earlier, I think Neva’s defunct generator was being reassembled and
a temporary one they bought in town yesterday installed, the Spectras looked
confident to leave today and Bennett went over and helped Happy Wanderer evict
a fish which had swum into the engine cooling system! So I think we will all
be sailing close together and forming the rear guard………
We all had a fantastic evening together last night – a good send
off at The Rock restaurant which buzzes with atmosphere every night and serves
delicious eclectic food - for the long alcohol free journey ahead which should
take us between three and four weeks. All the ARC round the world yachts are
here now too – so double atmosphere and lots of jolly camaraderie.
I hobbled ashore this morning (badly bruised the ball of my left foot
skipping over the lava flows!) and bought fresh bread, only four packs of bacon
to be found, a replacement shower head for Bennet’s bathroom, deodorant,
shaving foam, blades, local mozzarella cheese, two T shirts, one hand made wall
rug and a lettuce. No citrus fruit here except lemons which must have been
frozen as they go off with a day.
The spare gasket set which contained our oil seal turned up yesterday,
not at 1500 as promised, not at 1800 either but eventually at 2000 – the
shop proprietor had kindly driven to the airport to collect it for us and it
was at his home! In the meantime when Paul and Bennett dismantled the prop
they had to separate the propeller shaft and coupling from the gear box. They
found the oil seal was worn out as they suspected but having only got one
spare in the kit Bennett’s opinion was that it was too risky to attempt
to change the seal as nine times out of ten it gets messed up during
installation. SO! After all that delay waiting for spares, we have decided to
wait until we get to Tahiti, when we can take
the boat out of the water, to actually effect the repair…. If we have an
emergency across the Pacific we shall have to reroute our journey here instead
of the Marquesas. To reassemble the gear box the boys had to saw off a
quarter of an inch of solid stainless steel from the shaft (using our emergency
demasting rig cutting drill) to make it all fit back together
again………(water came rushing into the boat when they disturbed
the shaft seal and had to be pumped out quickly) but even though it has had a
good smear of ‘stopleak’ around the edges……..it is
still dripping a substantial amount of oil tonight We shall just have to keep
topping it up with ATF and catching it underneath as we go along. The good
news for us is that our diesel seems clear and free of contamination –
unlike reports from some of the other Rally boats on the six o’clock net
tonight.
We have taken the rocker cover off the generator and tightened down the
cylinder head so we shall have to wait and see if this solves the leak
here……. Apparently the solution to our washing machine problem is
to put the generator under more load so we have bought four light bulb fittings
and four 150 watt light bulbs which we will wire to a piece of plywood and
light up every time we want to do a wash!! This will save the remaining
element on our toaster and we will be lit up like a Christmas tree!!
The right fridge, filled with meat, cheese and bread for our trip has
packed up today – we cannot work out why yet but the compressor
doesn’t seem to be kicking in….. we will have another look in the
morning…… if the gas has gone we will be in trouble!
We are back on our watches, three on – six off, Bennett 1800 to
2100, me 2100 to 2400 and Paul 2400 to 3.00am and so on…. Lots of squalls
around, not a breath of wind and the grib files telling us we need to motor 300
miles to find the trades. Again, each skipper has their own strategy –
some going for the rum line but we are heading south as usual. We are in good
spirits, a bit hung over from last night, and looking forward to our challenge
ahead.
Read a great quote of Darwin’s
today – ‘It is not the fittest that survive – it is not the
strongest that survive – only those survive who can adapt to change’
