Phuket to Sri Lanka - Day 5

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 8 Mar 2012 05:47
7:25.208N  88:46.492E
 
March 8, 2012
 
Our marvelous sail continued for a full 42 hours before it petered out last night at 8pm when the wind got very light and turned west to sit directly on our nose.  We expected this to happen (thanks Bruce), so didn't even grumble too much over the next 12 hours while we motored through the night.  Motoring makes for boring night watches, but sometimes boring is good.  We'll take boring over being the filling in a thunderstorm sandwich any time.  Besides, the moon was full and the sky clear, so it was nearly like motoring in daylight with the horizon fully visible if only slightly blurred by moonlight.  This morning the wind turned more to the north (again, as expected), and we are sailing at a nice pace (5ish knots) in very comfortable seas.  We are pleased to be doing so much sailing given the relatively light winds.
 
We've covered 130 miles in the past 24 hours.  Not stellar, but respectable.  As of 8am this morning, we reached the half-way point. Not too bad.  The time has gone by really fast.  You wouldn't think it would, but it does.  When the night is broken up into three-hour watch chunks, it flies by.  During the day, the time slides by effortlessly as we move from my nap time to SSB radio time to blog writing and email sending time, then lunch time, Bruce weather forecast downloading time, Don's nap time, tea time, shower time and finally at about sunset, dinner time.  You might say we lead a fairly regimented life aboard ship when on passage, but it does make time fly.
 
Yesterday, at shower time (taken sitting down in the cockpit where it's much easier to maneuver and enjoy the view while lathering up) the dolphins came to play.  We haven't seen dolphins in ages, so it was particularly fun to watch them frolic in our bow wave.  Amazing creatures.  We were only going 5 knots at the time, so they had no trouble keeping up (more likely they had to slow down for us).  They are so playful and cute you just want to pluck them out of the water and give them a giant hug.  We didn't, but we wanted to.  They (or their cousins) came back to visit again this morning over breakfast.  Nice of them to provide morning entertainment as well as evening.
 
Ever since the thunderstorm episode, things have run fairly smoothly around here.  There was just one heart-in-mouth incident the other day when Don turned on the generator for the first time to charge the batteries while we were sailing.  It clunked on with the familiar buzz, chugged for 30 seconds, and then quit.  It's difficult to adequately describe the knife-in-the-gut sinking feeling that accompanies any sudden failure of essential equipment on a sailboat while sailing in the middle of an ocean.  Don tends to immediately attack the problem (surprised, anyone?), while I stew about the repercussions of the failure.  The same happened this time.  Don immediately started diagnosing the problem while I ran Plan B alternatives through my head, 'Ok, no generator, that's ok, we'll run the engine to charge the batteries, that's ok, but we'll use 3 times the fuel to do that, do we have enough fuel? maybe, maybe not, how can we conserve power? turn the radar off, maybe hand steer, etc., etc.'  By the time I had thoroughly worked myself up into a frenzy, Don found the problem, fixed it, and restarted the generator.  It has run fine ever since.  It turns out that the generator's water cooling pump lost its prime.  Don re-primed the pump and everybody was happy.  We've been calamity-free ever since (touch wood, say the Brits).
 
Bruce says to expect fine weather and light winds over the next 3 days.  We can handle that.
Anne