8.03S 110.46W  Sunday 16^th February – Day 9 my watch – 5.00am with the sun shining bright already, with our  leg time – 8 UTC sunrise is at around 4.30am – but tomorrow we change back another hour and a half to -9.5 UTC so it will be sunrise at 3.00am and sunset at 16.30 for a while!!  Our wind speed is 15 knots from the SSE.  Generally it’s not nearly as hot as I expected – the steady winds keep us cool and for most of the day the sails block the sun completely and we travel along in the shade!  Yesterday was a bit of bleary blur – Bennett was feeling better but weak and a bit low – then Hugh, the good doctor, suggested we give him one cold beer (for the calorie intake and the ‘lift’) and it did wonders!  He downed it with a chunk of cheese as we looked on enviously!  Paul seems to have escaped the B Bug and I am fighting it so we are all a bit perkier today – we only have intramuscular antibiotics left after Bennett’s course so I just hope it’s not me that needs them!

We still managed to do our battery check yesterday, we have lead acid batteries so it is a weekly chore, which is really important as they are under enormous load.  This is quite a paraphernalia as the batteries are located under our bed!  First we need to stack our eight pillows (I know, I know but I like being wedged in!) duvet cover, fleecy white blanket (I still feel the cold!) bottom sheet, thick wrap around mattress cover, mattresses and plywood boards somewhere.  Then we have to unscrew the fitted, made to measure, heavy drawers, full of all my clobber, and lift them out and find somewhere to put them too - where they won’t roll around. Then, in turn, we lift the little lids on each of our 7 lorry batteries to reveal 8 little holes in each one and peer in with a torch to see if the water levels are still covering each of the plates.  Invariably with the amount of use they are getting on this journey, and in this heat, they need topping up weekly -  but first we test each battery with a hydrometer.  For those, like me, who don’t know what this is – it is a clever device a bit like one of those things you use to baste a turkey but with a mercury ball inside.  You suck up some ‘water’    from each battery so that the mercury ball is suspended in it, this measures the specific gravity of the ‘water’ so you know what condition your batteries are in.  If the batteries are full of energy the ball stays suspended in the green area, if they are discharging their energy the ball will be in the white indicator area, but if the battery is ‘dead’ or has discharged all its energy then the ball will be in the red area.  That’s when you know you’re in trouble!  Very ingenious!  Most of ours needed a little top up so it was out with the funnel and in with the distilled battery water which is ready mixed with a little acid .  Once this wass all done, we got out the multi meter and checked the voltage of each battery to make sure they were all the same (one low one can affect the whole bank and anyhow would indicate a problem).  Ours are all at the optimum level of  13.6 volts which is excellent news.  Actually we keep one of the batteries isolated from the others as a precaution and this just feeds the generator.  They are all stacked neatly in the fibreglass box Paul and I made before we left Motril and Mike our friend and electrician in Spain’s wiring still looks like an art form!

Our new tow generator propeller, on its longer line and with an anode attached to the shaft to weigh it down and stop it skipping out of the water, is producing an amazing amount of amps – enough to run both the fridges although at the moment only one is working.

Today, we were mulling over what our ‘best buys’ have been and these would have to include, the Seagull water purifying system, the Twistle rig (although still a bit scary when it goes wrong), the Hydrovane, the Pagero generator, the Motorola Iridium phone, the Panasonic tough book computer, the Northstar chart plotter, 2 x 50 amp Sterling battery chargers, the modified ITT tow generator and the washing machine. 

The best lower cost widgets I would have hated to be without are a ‘click-clack’ folding upholstered seat we use in the cockpit (wish we had two more!),  two folding plastic deck chairs on the rear deck, an orange pick up truck revolving light (Paul’s secret weapon if someone claims they can’t see us!) a flat screen mounted TV for film nights, the toaster and Brevil,  my huge non stick paella pan, the Leatherman,  yards of non slip rubber matting and lots of Ikea stick on LED cupboard lights, a cheap 300 watt inverter bought on ebay for 6 pounds has been indispensable and a USA (half price) VHF handheld repeater microphone in the cockpit (lat and long plus distress buttons).

The bad buys? The stainless steel davits custom made at enormous expense for the dinghy on the back are a disaster and we wish we had remodelled our original ones, the bread maker that churned forever and produced one tiny loaf at the end of it all, the icemaker whose ice had melted by the time it had made enough for four drinks, the barbeque which we haven’t used once (far too tippy uppy even at anchor and throw away ones for the beach are much more practical) – too much medication most of which I’d be too ignorant to ever administer and 10 plastic egg cartons which promptly burst every single egg you put in them when you try and shut the lid!!