Cape Town to St Helena - Day 11 1400UTC
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sat 4 Mar 2023 14:21
19:19.9S 000:29.9E COG 280T SOG 5kts Wind F3 SE Sunny today and gentle but slow sailing. With the rolling of the boat and light wind we can’t sail a direct route to St Helena as the sails get thrown around too much and bang from side to side. We need enough speed to keep the mainsail filled despite the rolling and so are having to gybe downwind. The waxing moon is over half full now but just as the sun is going down it clouds over and we only get fleeting moonlight through the gaps. When not behind cloud the Milky Way is spectacular even to the naked eye. My good friend Paul would, as a keen photographer, be impressed but on a moving boat there would be no possibility of long exposures. What Paul could photograph are the spectacular Crepuscular Rays (I think that is what they are called). These are shafts of light angled like an upside down Japanese hand held fan that shine through the gaps in the clouds at sunrise and sunset. They are spectacular out here. I’ll put a snap on the iPhone Paul. We have two heroes on board that I am happy to sing about. They are called Hewie and Dewie. I’ve always thought it a bit ridiculous to give names to pieces of equipment but some may recall the two endearing and uncomplaining robots tending the plants in the space ship’s terranium, the earth’s last hope of finding a planet to colonise and perpetuate life (I can’t remember the name of the film and there’s no google at sea to help me). Hewie is now the Hydrovane that has steered us most of the way around the world. A remarkable piece of equipment designed to be robust and almost maintenance free. This independent rudder with no power input other than the wind means that the only time we ever use the autopilot steering system is when motoring. I cannot conceive of doing a circumnavigation without one (or it’s equivalent) although some do still rely on just the autopilot. Without using the autopilot (or hand steering) our only power requirement when sailing is for the refrigerator, freezer, instruments and lights. When the sun is shining our two solar panels will give us up to 10 amps of battery charge which is sufficient during the day. The UV light in Cape Town must be particularly strong because all the yachties there were astounded at how much power their solar panels were generating. We had no need for shore power at any time in Capetown other than when starting up the portable freezer ahead of this passage and then running it day and night (we weren’t running the Duogen in wind mode in the marina). When cloudy or at night on passage we need an alternative to solar power and this is where Dewie the Duogen comes in - our wind or water powered generator. When we introduced the portable freezer in Thailand we were faced with a power generation shortfall. This was compounded on passage because there appeared to be a regulator conflict between the Duogen and the solar panels meaning power was being dumped rather than fed into the batteries. The new regulator on the Duogen has completely resolved this issue. Providing we have a boatspeed of at least five knots at night the Duogen will allow us to run the freezer etc and keep the batteries fully charged. During the day we often don’t need both the Duogen and solar panels and a lot of energy is dumped. In wind mode at anchor the same thing applies provided there is sunshine and a reasonable breeze. Without either we might struggle a bit but the freezer is only intended for longer passages. The Duogen has required a bit more maintenance than the Hydrovane but all relatively straightforward and to be expected. We have two essential pieces of equipment mounted on the transom that have uncomplainingly steered and powered us over tens of thousands of nautical miles. Pretty remarkable. |