eventful night and day with spinnaker
babelfish
tony zwig
Fri 20 Apr 2007 02:22
134:34.44W
Hello all from Babelfish,
winds hve lightened and we have slowed so it is a bit more relaxing although the waves are still confused and at times were big last night. Just as we were starting to cook our Thai dolphin safe tuna for dinner, the original butane bottle ran out. Fortunately it was still light when we hung Thom off the stern rail on the diving platform so he could change the bottles. It was a successful manoeuver completed safely and we all enjoyed our tuna; although the peanut gallery made noises about portion
sizes.
Sticking with the theme of energy, last night after dark we found we could not start the generator. Confidently, we started our new engine and went about our routine and watched more 24 on tv. After it was discovered that the engine was only charging the starting battery and not the house batteries the tone got more sombre. We doused all the tv and monitor screens and other unnecessary power drains. Then we did what we have done often when confronted by problems; we called our very friendly broker,
Alan Baines near midnight his time(Rhode Island). Alan, always full of good ideas advised us to wait 30 minutes and we could call the guru who would be just then, arriving at work in the boat factory at Sweden. We then had this hour long call where Leif from Sweden talked us through troubleshooting (still don't know the cause of the problem) and then devising and making a work around. Some of the exchanges went like this: "Do you have a multimeter? Does anyone there know how to use it? Put
it on the regulator? What does that look like? Well, Its smaller than a bread box and has green flashing lights. Where should we look? etc. All of this was via Leif and me on the phone and then relaying to the guys in the engine room. In the end, we got what should be a workable solution (if we don't drain all our diesel because the engine uses more than the generator). And then we put many of the lights back on.
Today we found the fridge had been off. After tearing the boat apart looking for fuses or other things that could cause the compressor not to work, we again "phoned a friend", again Alan. He casually mentioned that the fridge has the smarts to turn itself off, if it sees we have low battery power; which we had,and it evidently did. Robert had been advocating a huge feast of everything fresh, a la use it or lose it, but was stopped in his tracks by Alan's revelations of how to get the fridge going
(ie charge the batteries more)
It has been lazier;winds at 15-25. We have gybed south again to avoid the dead area which seems to show itself further south than before.
Today we flew the spinnaker. As the wind built along with the waves, we wrapped it around the forestay quite tightly. I was already starting to talk about cutting it away but fortunately a gybe and some skillful and patient deck work got it released.
PLEASE READ THIS PARAGRAPH IF NONE OTHER
WE TRY TO SEND THIS BLOG BECAUSE IT IS FUN FOR US AND TO KEEP FRIENDS AND FAMILY INFORMED. IF A NEW REPORT DOES NOT APPEAR, IT DOES NOT MEAN SOMETHING IS WRONG. WE MAY BE TIRED OR AS LAST NIGHT THE ISSUE WAS CRYSTALIZED WHEN WE MAY NOT HAVE SENT IT TO SAVE POWER.
For the first time today, we are seeing blue sky and enjoying a nice spinnaker run just before sunset.
babelfish