Wild Goose - Much Calmer today Tue May 7 on Wild Goose
dwere in yesterday and it feels relatively comfortable. We just had our morning SSB check in and we contacted the four sboats that left from Hampton with us. We talked to David on First Edition, and he was able to talk to Sage on the VHF radio and communicate his position to us. We are in AIS Range of Outer Limits, meaning we could see him on our chartplotter and so we were able to call him on the VHF radio. He is about 5 miles behind us. It looks like we are all in a pretty close pack.
Everyone said the trip so far had been "rough," especially yesterdays Gulfstream travels with the sloppy seas. There are some people on board are seasick or close to it. We have one "issue" we are dealing with. We discovered diesel fuel below the engine last night and we have a small fuel leak from the return hose from the injectors. Mike Taber and I spent some time trying to figure that out and with the rough seas and the smell of diesel fuel we both felt a little "uneasy", but we came up for air.
We lowered sail last nigh to just a staysail and a reefed main; we took in our Genoa completely. We found that our rails were too much in the water and the ride was uncomfortable. We are going about 5 1/2 to 6 knots now, so we aren't flying, but we all agree this is a good way to ride. The other boats seem to agree, so for now there is no thought of competition, just a desire to get to Bermuda safely and comfortably.
We will address the fuel leak today. We have a generator to charge the batteries and if we cant fix the diesel leak on the engine we will sail to Bermuda; we are a sailboat after all, and we will either sail into the harbor if it seems prudent or run the engine for a short period of time to get through the difficult parts. We'll figure it out.
I was able to sleep well last night and for the first time. This is a wonderful thing and makes life beautiful again. Mike Taber still hasn't slept. He is a longtime schooner boat captain and he says that like me he fights for sleep underway. So we hope he'll be able to get some today. At some point your body overtakes any resistance to sleep and forces it on you. You just hope that comes before you start talking jibberish, which happened to me one time.
That's it for now. We'll try to take pictures and send later. There is a process for reducing the filesize to satellite size that takes a little effort, and right now getting this report out is more important.
All is well on the Wild Goose and we are making good progress towards our destination.
Hugh Moore
Wild Goose
Previous
|
Next