No, this is not the sequel to Redford's disaster movie but rather the plight of Galatea 3 days back. At roughly 02:30 Saturday morning Kev woke me with the news that the boat's yanmar engine had just quit. After 6 days on the run motoring flawlessly, 24 hours a day, things suddenly turned ugly. Simultaneously with that news, whatever light wind we had also promptly died. After staring at the engine for several minutes, and then for a similar amount of time at the wind speed indicator, we packed up the cockpit, rolled up the genoa and 2/3's of the mainsail and went to sleep, in a rock and rolly manner.

Luckily, by day break, the wind we had been motoring northwards for began to stir and Kev got us moving under sail, while Scott and Neil went back to staring at the engine. We had thought through a few possible causes, including the possibility of some kind of mechanical failure within the engine which we would not have been able to address. We focused on the diesel supply side, made some changes, ran a test, concluded that maybe we had licked the problem, packed all the tools and parts away - all at a pretty marked heeling angle to port, and then anxiously fired up the engine. It ran for several minutes, then quit.

We continued sailing, tacking and slowly making way northwards.

We repeated this process again on Sunday with the same result. After fiddling around again on Monday, we held our breaths and performed an extended test again. All worked well. What a relief. We would now be able to motor forward at times of light wind and then into the Mindello marina in the Cape Verdes. 

After 3 days of sailing, we are motoring again to get up into the Cape Verdes islands group ahead of heavy north easterly winds forecasted to arrive on Wednesday evening. Hopefully we will get into the marina by the end of the week.

On the fun side, we have seen dolphins, a whale - he swam alongside the boat looking at us with his big eye - beautiful, a shark, a school of sunfish and, of course, many flying fish. Oh yes, and this evening our third ship since we left Cape Town. Nice starry nights - Orion, Scorpio, southern cross, Sirius, and many shooting stars. 

- S/V Galatea