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Morning Star - Carl blog2



Fri Nov 18 @15:30 Three hundred forty seven miles to go. Should be there sometime late Sun afternoon. We're moving along nicely at about 7.5 kts in 14 kts wind about 70 degrees off our bow, a nice point of sail. We've been on this tack forever. Life at 15 to 20 degrees of heel can be wearing. A period at closer to 25 degrees was downright aggravating. Fortunately spirts are good even though we're abstaining from spirits. I only do very terse, rude messages from the navigation computer which hooks directly to the email outlet. Trying to keep from sliding in the chair onto the keyboard is a challenge which soon grows tedious. 

Yesterday we caught 3 dorados aka mahi mahi fish. We let the last one go as it was getting later and the fish was small. The two Johns are our fishermen, and John Kraft cleaned and filleted the fish. They were quite wonderful last night with homemade coleslaw and we still have one in the freezer. Just at the end of the day on Wed as the guys were winding the fishing line in they hooked a dorado but the 2 lines we were dragging got crossed and tangled letting the fish escape. But we made up for it yesterday. Inspired by the great taste of them last night, the 2 Johns are at it again. 

 Tonight's dinner is one of the prepaired frozen meals from Karen Bovie. The 2 Karens have kept us in lots of great meals. I had been keeping some in reserve in case of nasty weather where cooking would be difficult. Much easier to grab something from the freezer and pop it into the oven.

Some of the boats in the fleet have reported problems. A scary one is a boat that takes on water on one tack but is OK on the other, so they plough on but haven't been able to locate the source of the problem. No doubt some hose from a through hull fitting and I'm betting on the bilge pump discharge siphoning back through the bilge pump. One boat got water into their diesel cylinders, necessitating pulling the fuel injectors out and sucking the water out of the cylinders, then changing the oil a few times. Again a challenge if you are under sail. 

 A couple of other boats had to head back to Beaufort NC to get engine issues repaired. Ah you say, who cares, it's a sailboat. Some boats have independent small diesel engine driven generators, but others like Morning Star need to run their engine a couple times a day for an hour or so to charge batteries and run the refrigeration. Once the batteries go flat, that's the end of communications, autopilot, lights including navigation lights and any chance of restarting the engine if the problem gets sorted out.

Other boats were running out of fuel because of the amount of motoring we've done because of light winds. A few diverted to Bermuda to refuel. We've probably burnt up 115 gals of diesel out of the 150 gals we carry but we've got another 20 gal stored on deck in gerry jugs. But after going through our port 75 gal tank we slowed down the engine speed to conserve fuel. 

We've had great sailing and some less than great sailing, but winds have been out of the south east which is exactly were we want to go. So on the advice of Chris Parker, our weather guru, we've been heading south for days, pointing at the Dominican Republic instead of the Virgin Islands. Last night in lighter winds we decided to just keep the mainsail up and motor as east as we could to get back on the rhum line as we were quite far west of it, the most westerly boat in the fleet. This morning I awoke to a sudden wind shift and increase of wind strength as the predicted weather change came through. Now we've got the NE winds that have been predicted to come through. 

Several days ago, maybe Tues we ran out of water in our largest tank (we've got 4). I switched to another tank and when I turned on the faucet a bit later, no water. I knew that tank was full wasn't it? Switching to the 3rd tank, water pump seemed happy. We were motoring so it's not possible to hear the water pump running. Same deal!! Not likely 2 tanks are leaking so must be a water hose came off a fitting or split. Switched to the 4th and last tank, shut the engine down and switched the water pump on momentarily to listen for running water. Viola, we could hear it running down the bilge and generally located the leak by just running the pump momentarily. 

We located the problem, a hose came off a fitting in do we need to say an awkward place to reach. With only maybe 45 gals of water plus another 5 gal in a deck gerry jug, we chose not to fix the plumbing problem and just keep the pressurized water system off and use the galley foot pump for all our fresh water needs. We already had been washing dishes in salt water (another galley foot pump) and just rinsing in fresh water. Oh yea how about the water maker. I had changed its 6 year old membrane before we left but hadn't wanted to run it in the nasty creek water at our marina. Once we got out I found we had problems and it was while we were motoring. Since the water maker is in the engine compartment, I didn't want to try to work on it with the engine running, because a sudden roll or pitch could throw me into the engine and its many belts waiting to catch an arm. Most likely the water maker has air entrapped in its lines and needs to have our pressurized house water to force it through, and now we don't have any pressurized water. We certainly will be fine with the water we have, but showers would be VERY nice at this point. 

That was before the night the engine began to overheat and we had to shut it down so no battery charging. Next morning just after coffee, some troubleshooting. Fortunately it was no sea water cooling coming out the exhaust pipe. Not too much to that system, but found the sea water strainer was clean, we had hoped it was clogged with sargasso weed which would have been an easy fix. Rubber impeller in the sea water cooling pump was new, but took the pump apart to see if the rubber wheel was spinning free from the brass drive, but it looked fine. After that maybe an airlock in the water lines to the exhaust injection elbow. After taking vents apart and starting the engine it began to shoot out cooling water as it is supposed to so we ran and charged batteries and caught up on refrigeration. Tried to start that night and the engine promptly overheated. 

Same deal next morning but John Lookibill felt we should actually remove the new impeller for a closer look. At least this time I had the guys heave to so the boat stopped its forward progress and wasn't heeling. Hard to do any engine repairs with the boat at a 15 degree angle so tools slide around and fly away. More likely to drop parts into the bilge too. Anyway the new impeller had a small grove worn into it where it turns across the cam in the pump. Couldn't feel any burrs or figure out why but put an old but good impeller back and all has been well since. So I will have Karen bring a spare engine sea water pump as well as a new cam to rebuild the current pump. 

Have used the satellite phone to contact the water maker tech service for suggesting but he confirmed my thinking. Our Furuno plotter/radar is just a wonderful unit but the trackball which moves the cursor is very erratic on the Y axis so we can't look at other boats radar targets and AIS targets easily, nor can we blow up out charts at our destination to see detail easily. Have to remove the trackball and move the roller it operates by hand. I know we will loose the ball or get water into the device since there is a waterproof seal on the trackball. So more unsuccessful sat phone conversations with Furuno, but I emailed Karen to get the email address of the service guy who was supposed to have fixed the problem a month before. He is sending the suspected part to her.

Our wind indicator instrument got into some mystery state and wouldn't give us the desired information. Again a sat phone to Raymarine and being in a que to speak with a tech guy was doomed to failure because it's hard to have a connection on the GlobalStar sat phone for more than 5 minutes. But I was able to email them and learned how to fix the problem, not in their manual. We have tech manuals for all equipment aboard.

So now we're in great shape except for the lack of showers and more convenient water access. 

Days are uniformly sunny, warm and wonderful and sailing's great as we just charge along to Tortala. I sat in my favorite perch on the bow seat and watched the flying fish pop out of the ocean and fly for 25 to 100 feet. Kind of bizarre. Found a couple of them on the deck in the mornings, also a baby squid. In the past I've been able to grab the flying fish when they hit the deck and chuck them back in the water.

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