We have now been weather bound in Bermuda since the weekend with very strong
northerlies and 25ft seas surrounding us. Our wondeful weather forecaster,
Bob Cook has now given us a weather window for Friday morning and we will be
leaving in company with at least Icini. We should have 15 to 20 knot winds
initially and seas reducing from 15 ft top below 10 ft over the the
following two days. There is a front due across our path PM Saturday but it
looks to be occluded and hopefully will no cause too much difficulty. I now
have Sean Maxwell on board and Smitty will be joining before we leave so
there will be three of us for the passage. This should more than cover
almost any eventuality. Sean is an ex Candian Diplomat and great fun to
debate the state of the world with and Smitty is a local Bermudan with lots
of sailing experience. Sean is looking to buy his own cruising yacht and is
comming along to gain some first hand experience.
The broken autopilot link bar has been replaced with a much stronger unit
and the system realigned. Looks good and we will see how it performs on the
voyage south. The bearing in the main furling system were replace last week
as was the damaged foil section. As we have been stuck here waiting for
weather we have also had the Goose neck enlarged to give the main furling
system more room to breath! We will complely re-evaluate the main sail
arrangement whilst in Antigua - the current system is no longer made and is
anyway not man enough for the sort of work we intend giving it.
We have made lots of friends in Bermuda including Shiela and Sinclair Ried
who are supplying us with Apple pies and meat pies for the voyage. A
woderful pair who are both 72 and don't look a day over 60! Jerry Cox has
given us great support and Bernie has kept us on a great berth so we have a
shower available and were able to finish our repairs. Charlie, our rigger is
also a great character - he is 65 - and has helped us re-assemble the foils
on the furling gear.
Finally we were able to commission the water maker today and after some
hiccups seems to work. There is some question as to the size of electrical
wiring that has been used for the installation as the unit does throw the
breaker off the board occasionally. We manged to keep it going for an hour
at last and hope that air in the system may have been part of the trouble.
With 200+ gallons in the tanks we will be OK for the seven days to Antigua
when we can address it further.
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