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Persistent Lady - (no subject)



Saturday 17, 2014 - Going Dark

Well 1,650 miles to the Azores; if you are a crow. We all know sailboats are not crows, but we do have a pretty straight shot from here. The LOW played out as we hoped and we are riding the winds toward the Azores. Looks like we will get the slingshot effect before the Azores high sets in, in which case we should be able to ride westerlies along the rhumb line to Horta. Figure between 100 and 120 miles a day, so 15 days or so.

We have a battery charging issue. About three days into the Bermuda run the wind generator pole broke off and the entire unit came charging down, missed Jake by a foot. We salvaged the pieces and ordered new blades which arrived in Bermuda in time to reinstall. We had Charlie, a wizened old Bermudian with a white grizzly beard redo the mount. He had four large gussets added to the pole at the base and we repainted and remounted the unit. Unfortunately, the output is not the same as it used to be, must have been damaged, although there was no outward sign of it. We have plenty of fuel, so we could run the motor to charge, but the engine uses a fair amount of oil when it runs and I bought a case of diesel oil in Bermuda (3 gallons) which cost $92.00 US / that is not a typo, almost a hundred dollars for three gallons of oil! So I only bought one case, now it looks like we would need to charge so often that we will run out of oil, and I need the oil so we can motor into Horta. So we are going dark, or at least partially dark. Whenever we request grib files any logs typed up will automatically be sent, so there may be some communication, but not much. Don't worry, we are fine, no issues with the boat safety wise, just going to have to use up all the meat in the next ten days or so while we let the freezer defrost. We are hand steering to save the auto pilot juice, no fridge or freezer, but the freezer will stay frozen for 5 - 6 days then slowly defrost over the next 5 - 6 days, no instruments, we have the large compass to tell us the course we are on and we know we need to make good about 75 degrees to hit the Azores. When we get close we will turn on the iPad for detail navigation.

The fleet is getting smaller, Tiger Lilly turned back because of the rough weather, just a husband and wife team, must have been really hard on them. Athenea had some structural damage and turned back also Reberth went back because of alternator problems, altogether about 10 boats have either dropped out or did not start for one reason or another. It has been a rough crossing, but we have fared well so far and look to finish just fine.

Hope to send more as the charging permits. I do plan to add more battery reserve and replace the wind generator, but may wait till Lagos, just depends on what is available in Horta.
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