After so many days of great sailing we finally ran out of wind last night and have been motoring for the past 12 hours. We are now within 1,000 miles of Hiva Oa. Yesterday was the first day of real boredom and irritability on board, fortunately we all recognized this immediately and got past this stage of the trip! Two weeks at sea for six people within a fifty foot space is a strain, especially when we still have another week to go! We all had a good laugh and resumed our daily routines.
As the fleet has spread out over nearly seven hundred miles between the fastest and slowest boats, the daily radio net call-in has become more difficult. We rely on volunteer boats to rotate the net management responsibilities each day but depending on the net controller's position and strength of its single sideband radio signal, we end up using intermediate boats to relay positions. The daily process has gone from 25 minutes at the beginning of the leg to nearly an hour as we approach the finish. Today we were unable to hear most of the other boats' positions and gave up once we confirmed that our own position had been recorded by the net controller.
Overall things have been going well with the onboard systems, we made 150 gallons of water yesterday which is the most we have ever made at one time (3 hours of running the watermaker). Our power generation needs are quite substantial, we have an average current draw of 20 amps which equates to approx 500 amp-hours per day, not including the power required for the watermaker every two or three days. We have been recharging our batteries three times per day, every 6-7 hours between charges. While sailing we have relied mostly on our small one-cylinder diesel generator since it uses less fuel that our main propulsion engine, but now that we are motoring anyway the main engine is providing all the power we need.
In addition to the Hathaway Brown curriculum Hubs has developed a boat-school curriculum for the girls. This has covered topics from safety and dealing with emergencies to sail handling and trim. Yesterday we had an emergency drill for flooding, both Kathryn and Audrey found the "leaks" in the areas of the ship for which they are responsible. Today we are likely to have a fire-at-sea drill.
Our meals seem to be getting simpler now that we have consumed all of the fresh produce on board, although our two cooks have both been producing meals which are always greatly appreciated. Corinne has made been making bread almost daily with recipes that Cindy and Janet have sent via email. We still have quite a lot of beef and chicken in the freezer, the butcher shop in Galapagos provided us with some very good quality meats which we have all enjoyed. Unfortunately we have had very limited success with fishing and are all anxious for another catch!
BRIZO Crew