Yesterday was not one of the best. The wind was from the north and with a big sea running it was difficult to maintain course and speed to the ENE. It was grey and cold which didn’t help. We have gone from sub-tropical to sub-Arctic overnight! After motoring the previous day I checked over the engine to find the floor beneath the engine full of oil. Olly and I pumped out a litre but couldn’t find any obvious sign of a leak. There did appear to be oil on the top of the engine around the fuel injector pipes for which the only source seems to be the gasket around the rocker box cover.

Before we could do further work on the engine we needed to reef the genoa, having already put three in the mainsail in the 25kt wind. When I came to pull on the reefing line we appeared to have all the line in the cockpit and no line would pull in. I went forward and found the line completely unwound on the drum and the drum revolving independently of the foil holding the genoa luff. We couldn’t reef the genoa nor tack without first removing the inner forestay. We decided to drop the genoa and put up the smaller gib on the inner forestay. We managed to get the genoa down without it falling into the sea only to find that the foil and drum were connected and turning together. Without the genoa in the foil the foil could be turned along with the drum and the reefing line could be rewound onto the drum. After this we hoisted the genoa again, went back to the cockpit and (un)wound two reefs into the genoa. (When the genoa is fully wound around the foil the reefing line has only a few turns left on the drum. When the genoa is unfurled it turns the drum and winds the reefing line back on). Why the furling line was fully unwound I don’t know but today the line is back on the drum and the sail can be reefed again. Not that I trust nothing is wrong……..

After the work on the genoa we settled down for a cup of tea and simple supper of pasta with a jar of Arabica sauce. We were however distracted by a high pitched echoing banging noise coming from the backstay. You sometimes get this noise when the topping lift flaps against the backstay but this was a puzzle because we no longer attach the topping lift to the back of the boom. It was worrying because you could feel the jarring of the backstay and I feared too little tension in it. Then, as you may recall, I remembered the wind instrument on the top of the mast had come free and when I brought the large torch to bear could see that the base of the instrument had become completely detached from the mast and the instrument was swinging around the masthead on the end of its cable, banging the backstay as it did so. For me, going up the mast is not an option. Not even in a marina never mind in a sea with 2m waves. There was nothing I could or was prepared to do and so all we could hope was that the instrument would do no damage while swinging around. After a while it lodged somehow and the banging stopped, much to our relief.

Today the sun is shining, we are able to hold our course and maintain good speed and the genoa remains reefed. We have checked over the engine, found no obvious oil leak, found no oil in the coolant (which might be the case if the cylinder head gasket had failed) and tightened or made sure everything is tight as it should be. The three bolts holding the rocker box cover in place could be tightened a little. We checked the oil level and found this to be still on the lower limit and looking quite clean on the dipstick. Maybe I overfilled the oil when servicing the engine? The engine started first time and ran with no oil leak apparent. It probably needs to be run under load to get the oil hot and we will just have to keep checking the next time we use the engine.

We slept through lunch but were generally feeling happier until I went to the loo and found a bathroom cabinet door has fallen off.

The weather at the moment is complicated by the appearance of and interaction between several low and high pressure systems. We are currently riding the compression zone of stronger wind between an anti clockwise low pressure system and clockwise high pressure system. These cancel each other out tomorrow when we look to have 12 hours or so of motoring. After this a big low pressure system develops to the west of the Azores that looks scary but might actually bring us favourable conditions for the final stages of our passage.