Adagio - From Adagio (U.S.A.) #4: 11/28/2018

4: 11/27/2018: Tuesday

The log noted a "glorious" sunrise and that's about the only description that fits. It seems no matter how many times you've seen "glorious" out on the ocean, it still stops you in your tracks and makes you take note of the beauty that surrounds you. It also makes you take more pictures .. even though you already have a thousand "glorious" sunrises/sunsets already sitting on your hard drive. Nonetheless, it is still one of the best aspects of the cruising life ..we get to live in the nature that most people only talk about or watch on TV.

Breakfast as usual .. which means delicious ... and the day begins with a generator run to charge up the batteries. With the seas as "rolly" as they have been, we have spent a good amount of amp-hours on the autohelm. it's working well, but using the juice, to keep us pointed where we want to go in the "1.8m swell" that seems to be coming from three directions simultaneously.

I was going to produce some water for drinking but it was not to be....
The plan is to start a flush of fresh water through the membrane, then add a little bit (usually less than 20Bar) of pressure to force already fresh water through and into the product line. The end result is water with a 25-45ppm purity which is a good as any Dasani or Evian out there.
I also know that it's a contentious issue to force fresh water, rather than sea water, through the membrane but I can only speak from experience that it hasn't harmed anything in the nearly five years we've been making 'fine table water'(made from the finest tables)from 'potable water'. Then there was today ...

I mentioned that the pressure gauge was kind of erratic last night and I didn't know why. Today the unit would not start at all. No clicking, humming or grunting .. just silence. I briefed the crew that it was out of service and that I didn't know why and we shifted ever so slightly into the "ok, now we gotta live without showers for a while" mode. Thankfully Adagio has good tankage and we'd brought along ample amounts of 6L bottled water so we just had to be conservative, but not panicked.
Since the generator was a running I opted to defer even a cursory look down into the engine room for a few hours to let the charge cycle finish and things cool off a bit.

Later .. well, much later actually, I hopped below deck into the engine room and folded up into the little space where the electric motor and high pressure pump live. Access is tight, especially for a 2 meter guy, but I found the wiring bundle and took down the multi-meter and a couple of small alligator-clip jumpers. OK, first diagnostic: it is getting power. With power turned on, I could barely move the motor/pump belt drive ... it would give a little bit of movement but then would stop dead. So .. what to do next?? Supper, obviously :)

During the day we gibed (gybed?) Adagio a couple of times trying to find a good combination of apparent wind, true course, and anything resembling a comfortable ride. We had to settle for two-out-of-three for most of the day and night. The sea is still confused about its true identity and has yet to make up its mind about which way it wants t send its waves out. For now, we are just riding along on a giant, choppy lake-like ride and we'll have to hang on (literally) somewhat longer in hopes of a more organized swell pattern.