Day 9 - Not a good day
Bonkers
Donald Macdonald
Mon 30 Oct 2023 18:14
Good sailing till 1400 averaging over 6.5 knots and sail area increasing as the wind dropped, all expected. Engine to be used overnight to keep speed up at 5 knots. Engine on just dropping heavy weather jib, engine stops about a minute afetr starting. Carried out checks overboard for ropes etc, no. Tried starting again, no luck. Investigated fuel system. Fuel bowl looked a little misty but not unusually so. Bleed system as seem like fuel starvation, no change. Now into bigger maintenance, coarse and fine fuel filters replaced system bleed, no change. Thinking about high pressure system which I know nothing about and how that was bleed, not sure and no manuals for this onboard. Tried phoning Richard Alexander on Iridium Go!, no answer to repeated calls. Phoned Pete True in Quay West Chandlry who said he was on holiday. Got given number of previous club engineer Paul Albert. He gave us very helpful advice on what to do next through numerous calls all this time drifting along at
2-3
knots not always in the required direction. From all things done he says should all work. As getting dark we are stopping maintenance and Paul will think about other options. Engine battery getting low on power and we have not had enough sun to try and get that charged to.
We are now both at a low ebb unable to see the end at the moment. Not sue how much time lack of engine will add to arrival suspect minimum 2 days if we can get some wind in a day. The next problem will be sailing into Las Palmas and then finding a competent engineer to fix it. This added to our already extensive list of jobs before crossing.
Dinner this evening was chicken in white sauce, peas, carrots, baguette, lump of cheese followed by tinned peach slices. Time now 19.30 so missed most of off watch already as John suffered this afternoon. Hope Paul has a brilliant idea for us in the morning otherwise going to be very tedious.