Monday 10th January 2012  Caribbean Sea 13 40.7N 67 55.6W 

Today’s blog by Peter

The day started bright and sunny, wind aft, twin headsail rig bowling along quite merrily.  Just like yesterday.

The first unexpected event was when a few minutes after starting to charge the batteries, the generator shut down with a “I’m too hot” message.  Probably highly coded but that’s what it meant.  Our engineers got on the case, concluded it was a lack of water cooling and it due course produced the remains of a shredded impellor.  The generator spares box (lazarette, behind box L) produced a replacement (the instructions now reading “replacement is a reversal of removal”) and in due course we were back in business with the generator purring happily.  Only concern left is why the impellor self-destructed in the first place as there are only 3 more like it and still many  thousand miles to go.

We listened in to the fleet net and then spent a happy half hour checking where everyone was.  SSB transmit still out but we receive everyone very well.

After lunch Anastasia departed for pastures South and David decided that 48 hours without a sail change was not using up enough testosterone.  The call was therefore for the frog sail (spinnaker) to replace our twin head sail rig.  Up, down, over, under, through and round (repeated) with lots of knitting saw the frog take to the sky.  Two minutes later one of our new Amtal blocks opened and released the guy from the pole.  The challenge was getting it down with the sail flying free, held only by its three corners.  In the process, amongst all the flapping, the sail collected a tear and is now going undergoing remedial repairs on the saloon table.

All this and the crew still has to contend with my cooking! At least we didn’t gybe the rig when the wind temporarily veered a touch South.  Twin headsails are great and can be rolled up quickly but swapping them for a spinnaker or interchanging them is not a quick process.