Amokura - Log Day 3 - Water, water everywhere!

Happy Monday from Amokura!

Some brief rainshowers today, coinciding with when I was sleeping, short lived and I thought I was having my leg pulled, having not seen any of the wet stuff since leaving the UK. But it was true. Monday morning, another shower, and some wind with it, so we reduced sail. We were rewarded with the most perfect rainbow though.
The lottery of leaving our internal cockpit window open to overcome the stifling atmosphere did not pay off this morning as another rogue wave came aboard, Mark and Nic, plus Kindles, both got a seawater shower, and I acquired a wet bunk! Grrr!

We were pleased to overtake a couple of boats in the night. Amokura was going like a train, surfing down waves,

Trying to sleep was another matter. Like being inside a giant washing machine on the spin cycle, in the stern cabin the whooshing of water rushing past the boat in the dark is magnified and I have a real sense of this vast, powerful ocean being kept at bay by the few inches of hull my pillow is resting against. The night sky reinforces the impression of us being an insignificant speck on the earth, billions of bright stars above, and phosphorescence streaming from our wake and bow wave, our own personal firework display.

Some moments of comedy when from the smorgasbord of breakfast options on board I selected rice krispies. Not the best choice - the wind gusting over the stern created a kind of tornado effect in the bowl resulting in a kind of krispie blizzard, cascading a hail over the cockpit.... snap, crackle, pop...whoosh! Tomorrow I think I'll stick to a banana - they are all ripening rapidly!

The fun continued when the newly repaired fishing reel whizzed out and a huge fish, at least 5ft, leapt out of the water...the line went snap and said fish vanished. We would have had no chance of landing such a whopper anyway. Lure replaced and line put out again, only to disappear again within minutes. The monsters of the deep live to swim another day.

The generator was playing up again today, it seemed to be a cooling water issue, but finally we got it going. We managed to successfully run the watermaker yesterday so topped the tanks up. Good news!

Water has been discovered in the stern locker, needing to be pumped out twice a day. We think there could be some ingress via fittings on the transom as with these huge waves there is always lots of water on the sugar scoop. Another thing to keep an eye on, together with a leak under the sink in the stern heads....the challenges of keeping water where it needs to be during an ocean passage!

Miles run in last 24hrs: 187 nm
Ave speed: 7.79 kts
Miles to go: 1647 nm

Signing off...

Liz Brigstocke