01.40S 91.05W  Friday 7^th March – 22.15 ‘leg time’ (one hour behind local time) and the night is black black black with no moon until 5.30am tomorrow………we sadly hoisted both anchors at 11.45 local time and motored out of what I would surely describe as one of the seven wonders of the world – if not the eighth! Zippy finally sorted out their problems too and set of three hours earlier, I think Neva’s defunct generator was being reassembled and a temporary one they bought in town yesterday installed, the Spectras looked confident to leave today and Bennett went over and helped Happy Wanderer evict a fish which had swum into the engine cooling system!  So I think we will all be sailing close together and forming the rear guard………

We all had a fantastic evening together last night – a good send off at The Rock restaurant which buzzes with atmosphere every night and serves delicious eclectic food - for the long alcohol free journey ahead which should take us between three and four weeks. All the ARC round the world yachts are here now too – so double atmosphere and lots of jolly camaraderie.

I hobbled ashore this morning (badly bruised the ball of my left foot skipping over the lava flows!) and bought fresh bread, only four packs of bacon to be found, a replacement shower head for Bennet’s bathroom, deodorant, shaving foam, blades, local mozzarella cheese, two T shirts, one hand made wall rug and a lettuce.  No citrus fruit here except lemons which must have been frozen as they go off with a day.

The spare gasket set which contained our oil seal turned up yesterday, not at 1500 as promised, not at 1800 either but eventually at 2000 – the shop proprietor had kindly driven to the airport to collect it for us and it was at his home!  In the meantime when Paul and Bennett dismantled the prop they had to separate the propeller shaft and coupling from the gear box.  They found  the oil seal was worn out as they suspected but having only got one spare in the kit Bennett’s opinion was that it was too risky to attempt to change the seal as nine times out of ten it gets messed up during installation. SO! After all that delay waiting for spares, we have decided to wait until we get to Tahiti, when we can take the boat out of the water, to actually effect the repair…. If we have an emergency across the Pacific we shall have to reroute our journey here instead of the Marquesas.   To reassemble the gear box the boys had to saw off a quarter of an inch of solid stainless steel from the shaft (using our emergency demasting rig cutting drill) to make it all fit back together again………(water came rushing into the boat when they disturbed the shaft seal and had to be pumped out quickly) but even though it has had a good smear of ‘stopleak’ around the edges……..it is still dripping a substantial amount of oil tonight  We shall just have to keep topping it up with ATF and catching it underneath as we go along.  The good news for us is that our diesel seems clear and free of contamination – unlike reports from some of the other Rally boats on the six o’clock net tonight.

We have taken the rocker cover off the generator and tightened down the cylinder head so we shall have to wait and see if this solves the leak here…….  Apparently the solution to our washing machine problem is to put the generator under more load so we have bought four light bulb fittings and four 150 watt light bulbs which we will wire to a piece of plywood and light up every time we want to do a wash!!  This will save the remaining element on our toaster and we will be lit up like a Christmas tree!!

The right fridge, filled with meat, cheese and bread for our trip has packed up today – we cannot work out why yet but the compressor doesn’t seem to be kicking in….. we will have another look in the morning…… if the gas has gone we will be in trouble!

We are back on our watches, three on – six off, Bennett 1800 to 2100, me 2100 to 2400 and Paul 2400 to 3.00am and so on…. Lots of squalls around, not a breath of wind and the grib files telling us we need to motor 300 miles to find the trades.  Again, each skipper has their own strategy – some going for the rum line but we are heading south as usual.  We are in good spirits, a bit hung over from last night, and looking forward to our challenge ahead.

Read a great quote of Darwin’s today – ‘It is not the fittest that survive – it is not the strongest that survive – only those survive who can adapt to change’