This morning the sun is shining on moderately calm seas and 15 knots of wind from the south. With following seas and a broad reach, s/v First Edition has been making good progress in spite of being delayed 5 hours in St George Bermuda due to alternator problems.
We have caught some of the slower vessels. Two notable events yesterday include catching our first fish and a whale sighting. The line Susan has been trolling hooked a baby sailfish that was approximately four feet in length (we have photo documentation). Not wanting to deal with the sword the fish was brandishing, we released him back to the sea. The whale sighting came while we on deck adjusting lines. "Look a whale!"; a right whale was gliding along side the boat, as dolphins often do. The whale, which was slightly larger than First Edition and was no more than 15 ft off our port side; then a second whale appeared. The lead whale rolled to expose his white underside, rolled back, breached the surface to spout and inhale, then lifted his massive tail out of the water and vanished beneath the cobalt blue waters of the north Atlantic.
We had difficulties with our electrical system last night the trimetric meter indicated our batteries were nearly flat and the newly installed alternator was not charging; even with all systems shut down, the meter indicated a significant battery drain that fluctuated between .1 amps to 6.0 amps. We suspected the autopilot to be the cause of the problem, so we hand steered most of last night - kinda tough for a crew of two.
At daylight we checked the specific gravity of the battery cells and found them to be fully charged and the meter now agreed the batteries were fully charged even though only an hour before the meter indicated the batteries only had 50% charge. It is disconcerting to have the Trimetric meter lie to us. We will continue to monitor the batteries for the next 1500 nm. Batteries are the life blood of the boat, supplying power for communication, is needed to start the engine, run the fridge and more.