Cape Town, South Africa to Luderitz, Namibia - Day 2

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Wed 5 Dec 2012 10:37
28:48.946S  15:42.141E
 
December 5, 2012
 
 
For want of cool water.
Not for us - we've got plenty - but for the generator.  Remember when Don had to do battle with the generator's cooling pump for hours while Harmonie was buffeted around by big Indian Ocean seas on the way to Mauritius?  Last night was a repeat performance.  Although this time it was dark and Harmonie was rolling to and fro rather ambitiously, it was not the two hour washing machine session from hell Don endured during that memorable Mauritius passage.  However, the timing could have been better.  At 8:30pm, a half-hour before Don's first 3-hour sleep session, Don went down into the engine room to fire up the generator and check that the cooling pump was cooling properly.  It wasn't.  After big sighs and a few expletives from both of us, I rolled out of bed to start an early night watch while Don descended into the rolling pit to change out the pump.  We bought a new pump while home this summer, and carried it lovingly back to South Africa in our hand luggage (causing a fair number of Syracuse, Detroit, Amsterdam and Johannesburg airport security guard's eyebrows to raise in the process) just for this purpose.  Aside from the sparkly new pump brought from home, we do have another spare on board, but like the one Don removed last night, it also seems to enjoy chewing up impellers - either that or the impellers themselves are substandard.  Either way, after an hour in the dark and rolling engine room, Don installed the new pump (with new impeller), and all was well.  Hopefully this will be the end of the generator water cooling pump story for a good long while.
 
Other than that, all is well.
We are still sailing nicely with the wind behind us, and did the same for all of yesterday and last night.  There were ten or twelve hours when the wind was a blowing a good 25 to 30 knots and kicking up some white, frothy seas behind us, but aside from a little saltwater spray in the cockpit (outside our 'back door') and a little more rolling than we would have preferred,  all was fine as we sailed fast.  The wind is down to a perfect 20 knots from the south, and should stay that way through our arrival in Luderitz tomorrow (Thursday, 12/6) morning.
 
More after our Luderitz arrival.
Anne