Evening All,
Well after the last couple of days I am very happy to say that today was a mundane day at sea... No knock downs, snow storms or big waves instead I have enjoyed winds 20-30 knots from the NW- WNW and a shrinking swell at 5 meters. After the last few days, especially the last 24 hours of little to no sleep it was great last night to enjoy almost a complete night sleep, almost. As the weather was so cold I decided to treat myself to 2 hot water bottles in my bed last night and it let me have a lovely sleep. When I woke up this morning the winds were still mostly 20-25 knots and patches of blue skies over head.
I wanted to go on deck and get in the yellow brick tracker to take a look at it but i didn’t want to have to worry about putting all my foul weather gear on for just a few minutes, so I donned my life jacket and made the dash. When I got a good look around I realise that I had not much to worry about as the conditions had eased considerable from the night before. I had the yellow brick tracker tied up with zip ties so I cut them all off and grabbed the unit from the back of the boat. I didn’t even look at it until I got inside but unfortunately there was no power at all. My best guess is that when I had that knock down there was so much water that it pressurised on the unit and water got inside, I am trying to dry it out now but only time will tell. In the mean time we will try to get another type of tracker active and I hope to have this running tomorrow or the next day but until then just to keep you all in the loop here is my current information.
At 17:06:40 UTC
Lat 46.02 S
Long 27.11 E
Making course of 050 at an average of 7 knots.
I have been waiting until I reached 46 South before altering course so I will be going again on deck shortly just to ease the sails and bear away to 070 T.
As the conditions were pleasant today I used it as a recovery day with a late sleep in. Once up and about though I wanted to do a few things. The sails for one needed attention. I still had the 4th reef in and the Storm jib up so it was no wonder I wasn’t making good time. I ended up shaking out to the third reef, I could have put more main sail up but I am still concerned about the squalls so I opted for conservative. I then re-adjusted the sheeting point for the storm jib. Given that previously I had experienced halyard issues I wanted to leave this sail up as I will likely have need of it again soon so I changed the sheeting point from the jib track to the furthest padeye at the mast base. It won’t flatten the sail if I want to sail close hauled but it works perfect for a reach. This also then allowed me to run a second headsail so I unfurled the stay sail and am now running the two together on the bow.
This sail arrangement seems to be going quite well and will hopefully get better when I can turn away from the wind to a broad reach in a few moments. The goal tonight is to sail a course of 070 T until I am at 45.30 S and then hopefully the winds will have backed as planned and I will gybe and go SE. One of the other tasks that was done today was getting my Wallas heater to work. It was cutting out but when I spoke to a friend he suggested that it might just need some bleeding and to keep turning it over until it starts. It turns out that given the way that the heating fuel line comes off the generator line and so it will only work when the generator fuel pump is switched on... Some more work required here I think. At least i now know why it’s not running all the time...
And so an afternoon of relaxation has passed and i am now ready for bed.
P.S. More recent Position about 2 hours ago puts Lisa at 45.45S 30.15E Winds 20-30knots
