Day 5

Ripples2
Fri 28 Nov 2014 18:49
Went through the Tropic of Cancer today.
A seabird (a Shearwater?) flew into the sail this morning, it probably spends months hundreds of miles from land. You could see in its face 'who put that there?' It was fine and carried on its lonely journey.
There was a low point this morning when one engine wouldn't start..this meant our only source of power was the remaining engine as the solar panels, the generator, the hydro generator and the second engine were inoperable.
We decided we will probably have to divert 500 miles to Cape Verde for repairs. After some messing with the engine to no avail, Greg tried putting the throttles in reverse and discovered it had caught in gear... It started first time, disaster averted.
This still did didn't account for the generator and hydro generator still not working. Greg and Simon start to delve around in the forward locker and...success! A breaker panel was discovered that had failed, now we have power.
All this 'snagging' would normally have been done, however the boat has not really been put under the stresses of a voyage like this before and some of the equipment had never been used.
Hopefully we can now spend more time fine tuning our so far poor progress, but we still appear to be ahead of the Aussies in a similar boat. W must be ahead at the end.