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Misto - Dyas 60-61: Musings on Cruising on a long passage



Today is a landmark of sorts. If our original estimate of 21 days for the passage from the Galapagos to the Marquesas is correct, then at midday today we are 1/3 of the way through. Of course it may be longer due to needing to go so far south in order to find the trade winds. But it's always nice to have something to celebrate on board.

Over the last 24 hours we finally feel that we have established ourselves in the SE trade winds, got out of the majority of the squalls, and are able to plot a sort-of direct course to Hiva Oa.

We estimate that we have used about 40% of our available engine diesel to get this far and we are hoping that future engine use on this passage will be minimal. Of course, the starboard fuel gauge stopped working as we departed the Galapagos so our strategy has been to alternate engine use, keeping the number of hours used on both engines the same. Thus, between calculating fuel usage, and watching the port fuel gauge, we have a fair idea of what has been used. In addition to our fuel tanks, we are carrying another 60 US gallons in jerry cans.

The strategy for speed under engine has varied across the fleet with some boats clearly going at maximum speed and others being more cautious and keeping around 5-5.5 knots. The logic of the latter boats is that this is their most economic speed. Where is Misto in all of this? We have tried to calculate fuel usage at various speeds in the past. It is true that fuel consumption is less at lower speeds, but then distance covered is also lower. Our conclusion was that, up to 80% of maximum engine rpm (which is 3000 rpm for our engines), we were using the same fuel per mile irrespective of engine rpm. Based on this we have motored with our engines at around 2300-2400 rpm, hopefully enabling us to get maximum distance for our fuel use which has put us in a slightly faster motoring group. We also only run one engine at a time as adding the second only adds 0.5-1 knot of speed, depending on conditions.

Sail plans are just as varied across the fleet - many vessels have an asymmetric and the Amels fly a "Balloon" from the mizzen mast. Code zeros, spinnakers and parasailers are also represented and many boats are carrying a whisker pole for sailing downwind wing-on-wing. We have had much more use out of our gennaker so far than we ever have in the past. When we purchased Misto we purchased a gennaker (or as we are a catamaran should that be a screecher?) and sometimes I regretted the investment as we hardly seemed to use it. On this leg of the World ARC that has changed my viewpoint. We have flown the gennaker on the same tack as the main sail, wing-on-wing, and, on one occasion Howard had the main-sail and gennaker on port tack and the jib wing on wing! We expect more use from the parasailer later on this leg once the winds become more consistent.

We have also experimented with various mechanisms for holding the fore-sail out when sailing wing-on-wing. The most successful seems to be a Barber-hauler that we have constructed by having a low friction ring on the jib sheet that is secured by a length of line to the mid-ships cleat. This holds the jib or gennaker sheet out to windward and prevents the sail from fully crossing back to the same side of the boat as the mainsail. Do I regret not purchasing a whisker pole? Maybe. But it's more weight and needs careful rigging with an up-haul, a down haul and fore and after guys to be safe and effective.

Today our generator played up and stopped giving a warning message that indicated over-heating. We have had this issue before, when stopping and starting it with only a small time in between, but that has not been an issue for a while. So we checked all the obvious things and the impeller had one vane that was cracked through and so that got replaced. It's now working fine again. We have also discovered that our water-maker does not like operating with the generator on in moderately rough seas. We have decided that the water-maker sea water inlet position is the issue. When in moderately rough seas it sucks in air from two sources - because of the bouncing and also from the generator exhaust, which is situated just in front of it. As we have a DC water-maker, the solution is to charge the batteries using the generator, turn the generator off to use the water-maker and then replenish the batteries using the generator afterwards. Generator and water-maker issues have also been common across the fleet, and many of the problems appear to have been far more serious than ours' however most appear to be getting solved as we go along.
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At 3/8/2017 3:48 PM (utc) our position was 10°33.81'S 103°20.41'W

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