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
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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
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