Saturday, 22nd January 2011 (our position as we type this blog is 16d00'S/13d32'W)
Our new friend, the Bird, remained on the boat for the whole night (he looked like a dipper) and eventually took off at sunrise, ahhh, sure it was lovely to have a stowaway for the night.
05.00hrs Aileen decided to make a loaf of brown bread, and it was delicious, as soon as the rest on board got a taste, it vanished very quickly. talking about making things on the boat, Emily used to have a chocolate making factory in a previous life, however,despite all the skippers best efforts, he could not get the girl to make chocolate on board saying "It would make us all fatties", mind you, Sham could do with a bit of weight, in fact a good few stone would be a start.
We get our weather from 2 different sources, one from a US based weather station employed by World ARC and the other from a Grib file from our own Mailasail satellite system. It is interesting to compare both and make our own decisions about what course to take etc. However, they never get the currents right, and we still have an adverse current, despite all predictions, books, charts, and our weather forecasters. Its frustrating, as the difference between having a 1 knot current against us or with us is 48 miles per day.
09.00hrs Tucanon was radio net controller today. Only 5 boats have left St Helena so far, and there are even some boats which have not arrived there yet from Cape Town. Wild Tigris is 47 miles ahead of us at present, mind you, that's after they motored for 24 hours. We traveled 188 miles in the last 24 hours, since 09.00 yesterday.
Around midday, the generator stopped suddenly, crikey, its after overheating again, there has to be something wrong with the feed pipe from the expansion tank, so we took the covers off the engine and dismantled the feed pipe, it was choked at the entrance to the manifold, so it took us about 15 minutes with sewing needles to clear the blockage. We filled up the system with coolents, switched her on, and off she went again, purring sweetly.
However, we do think our batteries are goosed. They are not holding a charge very well, possibly caused by letting them get too low before running the generator and charging them up again. Gawd, boats, boats, they would drive you bonkers at times, one thing for sure, never a dull moment.
In mid afternoon, Sham asked skipper if the "Bag of Fear" always had holes. There are no holes in it skipper replied. Ohhh, maybe you should take a look. So skipper walked up to the bow and took a look... there are at least 6 holes in a row across the top! Lets get this thing down before it explodes, as the wind was a good 25 knots and growing. 35 minutes later, we had the spinnaker in the saloon, up over the table and executing a repair to the sail. It is obviously snagging aloft somewhere, and to think we paid a professional rigger in Mackay to check all the rig at the top end of the mast for snags, as we have had this problem before! Skipper can't express himself properly here, as he promised the Royal Cork YC, that he would curtail his use of flowery language, but you can guess what!
Repairing a sail that's 23m long in a small cabin is difficult, but repacking it into its sock is even more difficult, but we eventually got it all sorted, and were happy bunnies again, we decided not to put it up again as there was too much wind, so we set up a goose wing arrangement, and maintained a speed of 8/9 knots.
We have actually circumnavigated the globe, we did this by St. Helena, but forgot to mention it. So far, we have sailed over 29,000 miles since we sailed out of Crosshaven on the 24th of June 2009.... and still lots more to go....
Dinner was more lasagna, and it tasted just great with freshly made bread.
The wind was SE, and now 25/30 knots, we took reefs in the main and jenny, before starting the night watches.
That's it for today,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)