Congratulations Gemma and Neil !
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Sat 9 Dec 2006 19:22
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Hello Friends
"18:10.27N 48:13.82W"
Antigua 775 miles
Firstly, this is a very special day
for Gemma (George's Niece) and Neil who will be married this afternoon near
Ludlow. Congratulations and every good wish for the future from George, Michael
and the crew.
Sadly, we were not only unable to
attend the nuptials, but we've also been somewhat preoccupied with maintenance
matters, mainly fixing dodgy equipment.
Our thoughts on:
1 Eno
cookers
Despite being quite monumentally
expensive, the lock on the cooker gimballing mechanism
failed today. It obviously wasn't
designed to work anywhere there are waves which cause it to rock occasionally.
Hmmm...
2 Aquagen Towed
Generators
Probably tested behind a motorboat in
the Solent on a calm day. Utterly useless in the Atlantic if there are any
waves. (Anyone seen any waves in the Atlantic lately ?) Considering that towed
generators are only likely to be used on long passages, this is a fairly
significant design fault.
Firstly the towing line supplied
knots up hopelessly in no time at all as it is too soft, Marlowbraid works much
better (3 strand core) and a firmer line, say 14mm dyneema would probably be
even better.
Secondly the line supplied it is not
nearly long enough and the turbine is pulled out of the face of following waves
with some force causing the line to wrap around the clamp on the turbine and
chafe significantly. (Plastic sleeving for the last 5 metres helps a
lot.)
Thirdly, the clamp holding the line
to the generator is unbalanced along the axis of spin and causes substantial
vibration in the generator - a simple bowline is much more stable.
Lastly, a fuse of greater than 10
amps would have been helpful Martin, but we changed that for a 25A trip we
happened to have in stock.
3 Aquabase
Watermakers
Aside from being far too busy to
bother replying to emails from mere customers, we have a fundamental
objection:-
Anyone supplying a watermaker to a
sailing yacht without an effective bubble trap to strain out air in the seawater
input does not deserve to be in business. A watermaker basically pushes seawater
through an extremely fine filter at high pressure. You will appreciate that
compressing air is quite easy as anyone who has pumped up a football will know,
but compressing water is difficult. As soon as you have air in the system, the
process fails.
Even a baby in a bath will splash
around and produce bubbles, even a rowing boat produces bubbles - and a sailing
yacht in a rough sea - bubbles galore !
We are proud to report that we have
today built a bubble trap of such astonishing design excellence that Rolls Royce
Motors themselves would be proud. It is most effective and we are looking
forward to freshwater showers again after a period of water conservation.
Further exciting reports to follow!
And finally
We were followed and played with by a
large pod of whales for more than an hour this afternoon.. They approached from
the quarters, surfing in the waves behind us and often made a more rapid move
towards us, diving under the keel or the bow. The larger ones were up to 10
metres long, dark backs, a pale patch on the underside and a relatively small,
curved dorsal fin.
Since they surfaced only
occasionally, our photos of them underwater would probably not impress on the
blog, but believe us, it was impressive to watch live.
Fortunately we have no damage or
adverse effect and seeing them in proper light was rather less scary than in the
fading light of the last sighting.
Best Wishes
George, Michael and the
crew.
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