water makers, squalls and Stars.

Sygitana
Wed 5 Dec 2018 14:10
17:34.5N 039:08.4W

COG 6.8
SOG 264
BTW 264
DTW 1276

Maintenance. its' constant here. mostly maintaining the things that maintain us such as water and power.
we've got a bit lazy and 'Poppy' has been driving for a few days now. she takes a good chunck of power from the battery bank so each day we run the engine to replace the amps she consumes. we also have to replace the amps the water maker uses. roughly 40 amps makes 40L of water. we know we use more than that a day. we havent been strict on consumption and everyone has had a quick shower or two. we discussed this at length before we set off. Watermakers dont like sitting still and not being used. they get a horrible sulfur smell that means you have to run the thing for a good long time beofre you can put the water in the tank. by using water almost as we please we create a demand to run the watermaker everyday. we monitor it's flow rate and pressure to check if the filters are getting clogged. all seems well so far.
we've run tank 2 dry now and the WM wont fill to this tank. it's part of the plan to arrive with nearly empty tanks except tank 1 which is our water maker tank. we like to keep that as full as we can. we still have 100L of shop bought bottled water and 20L of jerry cans plus around 80L in tank 3. if the water maker stops today and wont work again we have plenty of water to drink and make food but the showers will have to stop.

LAst night saw our first 'squall'. the wind missed us but Mike got a good soaking on his watch. we are now on squall watch as we dont want to get caught out with full sails up. night watch was a bit cool last night tempwise. but the stars were out in force. if you've never seen the night skye devoid of all light pollution then you cant imagine the sheer number of stars you can see. the milky way strecthes out as a band of almost white cloud across the sky. small clusters of stars sit together. the odd man made light, a satellite zooms across the sky. it does leave you wondering; of all the millions (or maybe billions of stars) that i can see just how many more are there in the whole universe? if just 1% of these billions of stars had planets around them and if just 1% of those planets had life then there must be billions of star systems out there harbouring life of some sort. Maybe somewhere out there a crew of aliens are sailing their vessel across an ocean with a bunch of others. racing towards a far off destination. Maybe they are looking up as well and wondering the same as me. Is there life out there?

Back on planet earth, the fishing rod is deployed. i dont hold much hope until we close the coast a little but don't tell Dave, he is planning a massive sushi and seared tuna supper and keeps asking when i'll be catching the fish. Genoa being a pain, been poled out this morning then brought back across for a reach now its poled out again. its not the genoas fault, the wind has been a bit light and the swell keeps rolling the boat and forcing the wind out cauysing the genoa to back and fill suddenly. it's horrible.

All well onboard today.
J,K,M,D,D





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SY Gitana