Business as usual
Friday 25 November 2022 21o 12.4N 23o 40.1 W Today's Blog by David (Time zone: UTC ) Today is day five - the crew have now settled into their routines. Familiar sounds around the boat as the sails are adjusted, the kettle boils or the fridge opens and shuts, all accompanied by Serendipity’s happy creaks and groans and the serene whoosh as we slide down passing waves. Very calm and, as I have said before, almost regal in our progress. Unfortunately, there are other, equally normal, sights sounds and occurrences which readers of Blogs passim may recall and which are not so welcome! The hole in the floor The familiar, comforting burble of the generator charging the batteries and running the water-maker was suddenly absent this morning, at around 11.30, leading to a sight that the cognoscenti will be familiar with:
Now, the old hands who have sailed with me will nod, knowingly, muttering something like: “Another impeller failure as a result of air in the water intake ….. again? Oh! Starboard gybe was it?” (Yes) “Really?” and then return to whatever they had been doing in the certain belief that David will put is head down the hole for a couple of hours – posterior rampant, so to speak – and then pronounce it fixed. Those same old hands will be relieved that I haven’t included a picture of my bum - just the hole – (I decided you have all had far too much excitement already this week! Ed.) Well they’d be wrong! Yes, the engine overheated, but this time it was a new Fault Code – Fault number 1 rather than the usual 72 or 74 which refer to issues with the raw water flow. No 1 references overheating of the coolant. We were in new territory…….!!! One of the possible causes is, in fact, a raw water flow issue so the first thing to do was the familiar check of the impeller but which was unexpectedly intact! Anyway, omitting a long story, I tightened the fan belt and changed the thermostat and it is now running properly. Hooray! Some commentators speculate, now that the Lithium batteries can take 100% of output of both battery chargers, that their five kilowatt load, combined with a 2Kw immersion heater and the water maker (together perhaps 9Kw) might have been a bit of an ask for a 9.5KV genset – and they may be right - but my money is on the fan belt J! Fishing Report No 1 – Another one that got away Veterans of the blog typically lament our ineptitude with the fishing rod. Terry has already reported that we took advice from a very nice young man in Arrecife who sold us a completely new kit (on account of the fact that ours resembled an old jalopy abandoned in a country lane!). He showed us how to use it, he even wired up a lure for us so there could be no excuses! Terry reported that we deployed our new kit briefly yesterday for an hour or so before: THE GYBE. We took the line in because I didn’t see how we could multitask in the unlikely event of a strike/bite while everyone was on the fore deck. Jenna, being keen, lobbied for it to be deployed again this morning – which we did about 30 mins before the preceding events. Once I had removed and replaced the raw water pump (impeller) I decided to take a break for lunch. Relaxing on deck while it was prepared the… FISH! FISH! FISH! You get the idea. This was a very big fish – so big that I couldn’t get the rod upright ..but, happily it “got off the hook” as they say. Yes: the tackle worked, we still have the lure, remarkably, but ………. STOP PRESS! HOLD THE FRONT PAGE! ………… Returning to the Blog an hour or so later I can report that my journalistic endeavours were interrupted by FISH! FISH! FISH! Here is the product of or labours – a modest Mahi Mahi (aka Dolphin Fish or Dorado) : Tiny by comparison to “The one that got away” – BUT - Boned and filleted – 650g of beautiful meat for dinner tomorrow! Err ….. that’s quite enough for today! I wonder what tomorrow will bring? |
