Day 15 SY Forté position 32° 01.6S 160° 55.6E

Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Wed 13 Apr 2011 00:22
1200
NZT ~ Were nearly into lord Howe Island ~ 98.1 nms to go!
 
Last 12hrs ~ 72.9
nms, last 24hrs 149.8nms
 
During the day yesterday and last night we really covered some great mileage and with slightly eased sheets we were peaking at 8 to 9 knots occasionally so we managed to cover the mileages mentioned above. the wind was up to 20 knots gusting 2 or 3 knots more few times. This made it an enjoyable sailing the motor only came on to charge the batteries. We will be in LHI for about a day and an half before we set off with more favourable winds for the east coast of Aus. We have been experiencing a few difficulties with water inside the boat getting the swabs in the of the yacht getting wet at times and it didnât seem to favour one side or another. Then after last night, Stefan and I finally figured out what was going on the fresh water tanks both have inspection hatches on them and both tanks are connected by a balance pipe with an isolation valve that shuts one of the tanks off. While we were on starboard tack all the water moved over to the port side and because the inspection hatches leak the water comes out hatch and wets the swabs. At this point there is nothing we can do about it but not fill the tanks right up and restrict the pressure on the hatches and hence slow down the amount of water that gets out. This is a job to be done when Fortà gets to her new home port in Melbourne, but if she is to raced around the cans it probably wonât make much difference if the tanks are basically empty.