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Starblazer - 16/01/2016 – Daring to hope!



All day yesterday we were waiting for the wind to drop to an unhelpful 10
knots, it didn’t. We had resigned ourselves to arriving at first light on
Sunday, however we made yet another day of good progress, but not quite good
enough. Our ETA is sometime between midnight and 0200 Cape Town time, 2200
and midnight local. The advice at the briefing was to avoid arriving in the
dark, we’ll probably fail to heed that advice. The moon is still in its
first quarter but shines very brightly until it sets at about 0200, so long
as there is no cloud. The past two nights have been clear until the moon
has found some cloud to hide behind for the last 30 minutes before
disappearing completely, it is tormenting us.

What is the worst case scenario? If the wind does drop considerably,
slowing us down a lot, we could arrive in pitch dark in the middle of our
watch system. This would make it difficult to spot a mooring buoy and we
would both be suffering from lack of sleep tomorrow. It is currently 0617,
we have 111 miles to run and about 90 minutes until sunrise. The wind is
blowing about 16-20 knots and we have a little favourable current allowing
us to make between 7 and 7.5 knots except when we surf down a wave at 8 or
the speed drops to 6knots! That is the trouble with ETAs, there are too
many variables.

Yesterday we cautiously tried the engine: I started it while John had his
head in the engine room looking for leaks; slipped it into gear in
tickover – no noise from the gear box and no apparent leaks; increased the
revs to 1000 with the same result; finally increased revs to 1500. Eureka!
The repair seems to be successful with no noticeable oil leaks even though
John found a rubber seal left over when he had put it all back together.
Don’t you just love finding a bit left over which shouldn’t be? Once we are
stationary on a mooring buoy John will take the gear box to prop shaft
assembly apart again and replace the seal! (John: if I can find out where it
belong!) At least we are confident that we have an engine to motor us into
the mooring field to pick up a buoy.

The other highlight of yesterday was the food! For breakfast I made
American style biscuits, rather like a scone dough, which we ate with
scrambled eggs and bacon, lunch was a Moroccan inspired couscous salad with
left over lamb sausages and for dinner we has pork chops with potatoes,
green beans and cabbage. Cooking meat, potatoes and two veg on only two gas
rings is a challenge! I bought a silicon trivet in Lakeland and turned it
into a steamer basket which fits snugly in the top of the smallest saucepan.
The system works really well most of the time and is ideal for the two of
us. Cooking for a bigger crew with this cooker would be far more difficult,
I really miss a working grill. (John: Noted!)

Joyce


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