Day 19 – Wednesdays!!!
Posted on November 22nd, 2013
In terms of the working week, this part of the crossing is very much Wednesday morning! The previous weekend is now ancient history, and there is no sign of the the next one! Instead, you have to accept this is what you’ve chosen to do with your life, and just get on with what’s in front of you! Having had several days of stronger winds, which although bring a certain hardship to life onboard, at least push you along quickly, I’m now back into a period of lighter wind days, slowing progress. This kind of adds to the feeling of a daily grind!!
Then followed a night which was probably the work equivalent of permanently deleting a document it’s taken you a day to prepare, when we were hit by a series of squalls. We had a broach, quickly followed by a spinnaker wrap (bloody white one again!!!), a tangle of halyards, plus flying fish scattered across the deck. It was carnage!! The final insult was then to find the wind dropped completely. I gave up and went to bed in a grump! The white spinnaker is officially the most hated thing on the boat. Somehow in the latest wrap, it managed to tie itself in a knot around the forestay. It took 20 minutes of untangling whilst getting soaked through by rain to sort. Horrid thing!!
I’m forcing myself to only think about short term goals, as looking at the distance still to go isn’t constructive!!! So I set waypoints along the way westwards, and focus on reaching the next one of these. I also work hard to maintain a routine, which helps keep me occupied.
This includes checking the boat over each day, looking for problems before they happen!! In particular, I am always checking the electrical system, which provides the power for the most important thing onboard – the autopilot!!! I have two autopilot systems onboard, each independent of the other. The main one is an absolute Trojan! It’s driven by a box of electronic trickery, but the hard work is done by the steering arm, which produces the sawing noise I mentioned yesterday, as its servomotor drives the arm in & out to keep Haskapa on course. The other system is a self contained auto helm, carrying all its electronic magic within the steering unit. It spends all it’s time in reserve, stowed away in the cabin!!
All the power is generated by three solar panels, which charge up two large 12volt batteries, from which the electronics onboard are fed. I deliberately minimised the amount of kit onboard in order to minimise power requirements, and I’m very careful about using power.
The battle with flying fish continues, and the calmer weather has brought another problem with the cessation of the self cleaning deck! With the bigger waves occasionally sweeping the decks clean during the stronger winds, I can make as much mess as I want, which along with any flying fish casualties, are washed away. I’m now having to wash this off myself – which is a bit boring! It’s much easier having self cleaning floors like the ones at home!!!!!
Haskapa’s Mo survived the stronger winds, but is now just a few clumps of straggly growth. I should remove it, but am curious to see what happens next!!!
Still to either see any rubbish, or to collect any in the net, which must be a good thing. I’m sure we saw a lot more rubbish when we were rowing – but I guess we were moving more slowly.
Sadly yet to see any other marine life bar the ubiquitous fliers.
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Today’s “thank you” goes to; Lina and Alan Rimell, Tom & Viv Cowdrill, Ian White, Mrs Popham and Mrs Hodgekinson. Thank you all so much for your very kind donations!
