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Amokura - Log Day 10 - Generator grumbles continue



On planet Amokura, it was a frustrating afternoon and evening with generator problems dominating. Mark thought he had cracked it when he extracted 4 old impeller blades from the heat exchanger. It ran for a short time, lulling us into a false sense of security, then overheated, conked out again. Meanwhile the temperature in the cabin and engine room was climbing. Mark was pouring with sweat when he clambered out of the hobbit-sized engine room door, conditions are challenging and cramped in there, surrounded by dials, pipes and boiling hot machinery.  Once again into the bowels of the engine room to bleed air from the system several times. Once again, it ran, then stalled. We took a rain check to sleep on it as we were all hot, tired, night was approaching and we needed to deal with a lengthy sail change, from parasail back to white sails, as stronger winds were predicted overnight.
Annoyingly these did not materialise, we could have kept the lighter wind sail with the conditions experienced, so instead spent a frustrating and uncomfortable night slowly wallowing through the swell accompanied by creaking ropes and flogging sails.

The morning brought better news. Repeated bleeding of air from the generator, this time completely removing the top screw for 20 seconds or so until water bubbled up, seemed to do the trick,  and we ran successfully for an extended period of time, fully charging batteries and topping up water tank. An important morale boost for the crew!
We've also rerigged the parasail and are currently flying along at 6-7 kts - much better! The motion is much more comfortable too.

We've heard on the daily ARC+ that 3 yachts have now arrived in Grenada. We've still got a long way to go but soon will be under the 500 mile mark, another important psychological boost. It's a daily ritual to plot our position on our small scale chart of the North Atlantic, held in position on the saloon table with bungee straps, and interesting to visually track our progress towards the Caribbean. It takes a whole day and night to move a couple of centimetres west on the chart!

Distance covered in last 24hrs: 128 nm
Average speed: 5.33knts
Distance to Grenada: 509 nm

Signing off...

Liz Brigstocke


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