Day 10 - Passage to St Helena;
Misterx
Sat 15 Mar 2025 21:13
15/03/25
8:30 pm
Day 10
Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 517 NM
Another slow, slow, day, number 4 and counting. Not so desperate, at below 4 knots per hour, we are still moving in the right direction and we should get some more wind by tomorrow or so our weather guru says. Not counting our chickens but if this wind turns up we'll be well away, even one more knot of boat speed would make a tremendous impact on our 24h day crunching of the miles we have left to close in on St Helena. At 5 miles long by 10 mile wide, we are really aiming at a speck on the ocean, smaller than the Isle of Wight. It is a miracle that this piece of land was ever discovered in the immensity of this body of water. Mind you, you should see it from quite a distance, at nearly 800 meters, its highest peak should be visible from a fair way away. We shall see in time.
What started as a very cloudy day, ended up as a brilliant sunshiny day in the end. The last few cloudy days have taken a toll on our batteries charging though, and it will take more than an afternoon of sun to get them back to full charge. We did think that cleaning the solar panels would improve the rate of charge, so we had Ian doing a bit of aerial aerobic to reach them. They are on top of our bimini, so a lot of climbing on the rail, stretching, and muttering under breath required, all while safely tethered, just in case a rogue wave would knock him off its perch. Interestingly enough, although not technically a "pants job", i.e not involving oily water, pertrol, bilge water, or any really dirty thing, it is only dust after all, Ian elected to perform this job in his pants, the red ones... not sure of the significance of this fact. Maybe he remembered a previous occurrence of cleaning the solar panel in mid ocean that really was a "pants job".... We'd had a booby squatting on to of the bimini for 4 days... I don't need to tell you what kind of mess he left us with up there, it was carnage... and smelly to boot! We'd read somewhere that birds' poo would damage the coating of the solar panel so we had to evict this bird... wild kitchen towel waving and use of a whistle was required, but the thing didn't go willingly... and it did try to come back a couple of times.
As it was this cleaning didn't make that much difference to the charging, but it was already late and the sun was going down. We'll see tomorrow, hopefully we will have a bit more sunshine as well as wind. Will would also help with the charging, our whizz has been fairly quiet, not whizzing as much as we need it to.
Talking about "pants job", update about the engine compartment leak, now that the bulk of it has been taken out, Ian is only getting between 5 and 2 litres of water a day from the back compartment. And it is water, not oil, he thinks that when he re fitted the thru hull in Mauritius, one was not fitted quite tight and is now seeping. So to avoid our little pants and knickers on oil performance, he is now emptying the bilge at the back every day, before it goes to the bilge under the engine where it acquires the shinny oily finish! The engine can do its thing, leaking for fun, but it is all under control, not spilling everywhere and we are not having any drama.
M