Chagos to Mauritius - Day 6
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Fri 4 May 2012 09:26
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18:13.339S 61:22.627E
May 4, 2012
We did have a nice break from very rough seas and high winds
yesterday, which was great....but last night after dinner we were back at it
again. This time we had high winds, rough seas, and rain. Our new
heading, which takes us direct to Mauritius is good in that the wind is aft of
the beam - meaning we don't bash headlong into the waves and the waves don't
bash sideways into us. Instead, we are surfing down some waves and rolling
up and over others. We are still getting sea spray, but nothing like the
other day. None of this is unexpected. Bruce forecasted the stronger
winds, so we were prepared. The stampede of rain squalls last night was a
bit of a nasty surprise though. There was no lightning, and the winds were
only as high as 35 knots, but the constant barrage of pelting rain made for two
grumpy sailors. Today, the rain stopped, but the wind howls on at a steady
30 knots.
The good news:
We are going fast. Although we won't make
the official port by sundown tomorrow (Saturday), we will get to a safe
anchorage by about 10pm tomorrow night.
The bad news:
The cooling water pump on the generator continues to give us
grief. We are not sure if it is just the rough conditions that are causing
the pump to continuously lose its prime (hence causing the generator to overheat
and shut down), or whether something else is going on. This morning, Don
spent an enjoyable (much sarcasm) hour and a half crouched in the engine room
changing out the water pump while the boat rocked and rolled. He found
that the impeller was completely done for in the pump he took out. Again,
we are not sure if the impeller was the cause or a symptom of some other
problem. When we fired up the generator with the new water pump this
afternoon, it ran for about a half hour before overheating and quitting.
Don just checked the newly installed pump and it is not working at all. We
suspect its impeller is now gone too. So, Don is gearing up for another
marathon in the engine room, pulling out the pump he just installed, replacing
the impeller and re-installing. When we try to run the generator again,
we'll try to stabilize the boat as much as possible in these
conditions (slow down, maybe change course) to see if that helps. If
we have no luck, we can always run the engine (take it out of gear and simply
run it at high revs to charge the batteries while we sail). Not a perfect
solution, but it should allow us to charge the batteries enough to get us to
port tomorrow evening.
More bad news:
Don did not get his coffee this morning.
Ok! On that cheery note, it's time for me to send this
and get the latest weather forecast from Bruce. Tomorrow we will update
the blog as soon as we arrive at the anchorage, which should be sometime in the
afternoon eastern standard time in the US.
Cheers -
Anne
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