can we help
+44(0)1983 296060
+1 757-788-8872
tell me moreJoin a rally

Menu

Domini - Log 3 - Were Off!...Again.



Good Morning Chris,
It’s 2 in the morning local time. It’s a beautiful moonlit night, and we have just had the biggest squall we have ever seen. It was about 4 inches on the radar screen so that is BIG! It lasted about 30 minutes and it was like standing under a waterfall, with the wind gusting up to 37 knots. On the plus side, we saw a moon rainbow! That’s right, a rainbow at night. In black and white. We never knew they even existed, but now we’ve seen one. Another first for Team Domini.

We had a fast but bouncy trip down to Grenada, and got there mid morning on Sunday. Just in time to book ourselves a table at La Sagesse Boutique Hotel & Restaurant, where we had lunch overlooking the lagoon, listening to the relaxing sounds of the Caribbean played by the live band. Well, relaxing sounds of the Caribbean and Tina Turner covers, but very nice all the same. So while the rest of the fleet were being thrashed by waves in the middle of the ocean, we were sipping cocktails and eating calliloo soup and ribs. If you have to go the wrong way, you might as well do it in style.

So Monday came, and Ju was outside the door of the mechanic's shop first thing. And good news, they had the MDI box and even better, an engineer - Nico - to install it. Woo woo. Our trip to Grenada had not been in vain. A couple of hours later, we had it all fitted, and then…catastrophe! It still didn’t work. The temperature alarm was going off. It must mean either the new MDI box was duff too, OR the temperature sensor was faulty, OR it was something else. After lots of testing Nico was pretty certain that it was the temperature sensor.

So all we had to do was swap it over for a new one.

They didn’t have one in stock.

It would take at least a week to get it delivered.

There was one in St Lucia.

I don’t think he could bear to see a grown man crying any longer, so Nico started fiddling around in the engines to see if there was anything else he could do. Finally, in desperation, he swapped the temperature sensors around from one engine too the other, mainly to check that it definitely was the problem before they sent off for the new part.

And lo and behold, the engines started! There’s no explanation for it. The identical temperature sensors worked one way round but not the other. It should not be possible, but that is what happened.

This is not engineering, this is witchcraft.

No matter. We now had both engines working! So thank you Nico. Thank you Genada Marine and thank you Island Dreams Yacht Services.

By three in the afternoon, we were off. Again. The rest of the boats must be 300 miles ahead of us, but contrary to what you might read in the position reports, we are not “Retired.”  We are just going the scenic route. And there is still a chance that we might get there before the cut off time on Saturday.

To Santa Marta and Beyond.

Ju & Lyn



Previous | Next