09:15.27S 136:20.64E

Day 5 of passage

Saturday 28^th August, 2010

Captain’s log: Passed lots of squid fishing boats during the night.  Valerie also hit a fish raft during the night at 9 knots but just a glancing blow so hopefully no damage done!  The wind has remained pretty constant at around 20 - 25 knots on the beam.  Today was a repair job on the damn bilge pump again - it's getting old like me.  I would repair one part on it then something else would fail, given up on it until we reach port as I will then give it a complete re-build.  We seem to have problems with air getting into the water inlet for the engine and generator when we are sailing fast.  So I have to check it each time we run the generator, it looks like the air bleed for it is blocked - another job for in port! Had lots of Dolphins  around the boat today always a delight to see.  1800 the wind has now come aft so we have poled out the yankee and are surfing down the waves hitting 10 knots at times.

Another booby keep trying to land on the boat for the night, after the last ones and all the sh** all over to boat we didn't think it was a good idea.  First he made about three attempts to sit on the dinghy - Valerie would poke him with the boat hook, the he came into the cockpit! So I whacked him with a cushion he eventually got the message!

Run noon to noon 178 miles Total 746 miles

We listen to Harry Potter talking books as we hurtle along at between 8 and 9 knots.  As a small distraction, we still have flying fish to watch, and birds:

Another brown booby decides to use us as his resting place.  We did not fancy our dinghy cover being soiled by his mess this time however, so  shooed him off with the boat hook!

The booby was not going to be deterred however, and flew back for another go.

David had a busy time trying to get our bilge pump to work properly, and again constantly unblocking the air lock on our generator.  Then the battery charger stopped working, so he had to get that all checked out!