21:12.2N 33:47.9W 29th November - Rough Night on the High Seas

The Snark on The ARC
Ben Little
Sun 29 Nov 2009 06:22
Hi Folks,
 
When I went to bed I did not think I would be able to enter the blog tonight as the sea was getting very rough and tough to manage.  We put in a reef to make it easier to sail and I think it helped but not much sleep or me or the rest of the crew.  Over all we have made pretty good progress during the last 24 hours clocking up a log distance of 190 Miles, which is as far as I can see the same as on the GPS so both are tracking quite accurately.  The big winds and waves of last night failed to speed our progress as it was very difficult to steer accurately (no stars moon behind us leaving the helm effectively blind) and our autopilot, George, was struggling to manage the waves as well.  I imagine there will be a lot of snoozing on deck tomorrow.  So a rough night in many ways.  We must do something about the tin cans in the cupboards which make the motion sound worse than it is.
 
Yesterday was for me not a good day as we lost our generator, Coleen was very helpful in finding the right words and helping me to ID the water cooling system, but so far the simple checks I have done look OK.  I can dive under the boat to look and see if we have a blockage in the water outlet but as far as I can tell it is clear.  The reason to look at this is that the machine is saying cylinder fault which we think may mean overheating (as did our engineer who fitted it who I managed to disturb on holiday in south America I think).
 
I have sent some emails out to ask for advice but I am not hopeful, we may have to rely on the engine to charge the batteries from here which is problematic in 3 ways: Firstly it burns much more fuel (though we have enough for this but it reduces our motoring contingency); Secondly, the engine does not like to run when sailing at an angle (??? sailing down wind is not so bad as the boat does not lean over so much); Thirdly, I am told that Marine Diesel engines do not like to run without load for extended periods. So we will run the motor in less windy periods for one hour at a time to charge the batteries and try and reduce our usage of high demand items like rice cooker, ice maker, water maker etc and do more hand steering (autopilot is also greedy on power).  In the end it is not great disaster we charged the batteries on engine all the way down from Gibraltar and the Gel battery set makes a big difference, charge up faster and deliver more power, there is even an Fischer Panda agent in St Lucia as far as I can tell, but it is a crushing disappointment to spend so much money, and go through all the delays to find that the Generator packs up half way across (well not even, we reach half way on Monday). Such is life and boats.  We promised ourselves a swim at half way so perhaps we will find a block in the water line?  we shall see.
 
Speaking of half way we shall pass the half way mark on Monday at some point so to look at brighter things, we also passed the 1000 Nm mark early yesterday morning (after the blog was sent now almost 1200 Nm with 1600 or so to go), We have our meal plan for Monday which consists of another bottle of great Rioja recommended by Maria and the El Court Crew, some Fois Gras to start with, served with the last of the salad leaves, Then confit de carnard with sea cooked new potatoes (maybe crushed with Garlic butter), corgettes (if still fresh) and white asparagus (from a jar).  Dessert of peaches ala Bunderberg (or whatever type of Rum Dugald smuggled aboard our not so dry boat). Not bad for more than a week in the middle of the Atlantic.  Dugald's meal plans have worked well but from our experience we could have taken on more fresh meat since with the exception of chicken all the packs we have used have had a use by date of late into next week.  I think perhaps we were relying on landing more fish rather than the fish running off with our lures.  As we move into the last week I think we will have a few light wind days and we can try again with the hand line and if necessary some hand made lures. As I think I have said before the big fish we catch at high speed in rough seas just bite through our line or break it.  Mind you I checked and we do have 60 lb line so the fish must be quite big 30 lb or so to break it.  Just one would keep us in fresh meat for a few days,  The other alternative is eating flying fish which don't require catching you just turn on the deck lights and they jump on board.  They don't look particularly appetizing  small and scaly (am I repeating myself here?).
 
Last item note today was the move to boat time, which is confusing our tired and slow brains.  Every 15 degrees west we go we are supposed to change our time backward by one hour to account for the time Zone changes between here and St Lucia.  We changed our watches, simple yes, but then the confusion starts as our position reporting to the ARC control group is then still on GMT so while we made it today we were a bit confused.  For tomorrow we are still debating whether we need to add another hour since we are now around 34 Degrees West of the Meridian which is 2 time zones, but we stared in the Canaries which are still in the GMT time zone so we missed a change.  Confused, No? well we are all at sea on this one.
 
I think I am all blogged out right now. More tomorrow, back to steering the boat or perhaps reading the Iliad.  Peter who many of you know lent me both the Iliad and the Odyssey to read on the way, it is quite entertaining if a little hard going and repetitive at times, something different anyway. 
 
bye for now
 
Ben