Phuket to Sri Lanka - Day 5
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 8 Mar 2012 05:47
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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
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