Dec 6, 2007 Systems update

Dec 4 was one of our nicest days. The wind was down a bit, the sun was out, and the seas had large evenly spaced approximately 15 foot swells that were coming out of the south and, oddly enough, out of the north as well. The swells from the south were smaller and probably more wind driven where the others were long high and from as far away as the north Atlantic.

Dec 5 the wind had picked up some but it was still a nice day. We enjoyed an afternoon of downloading pictures from everybody’s camera into Lee’s computer. Just before dinner we were hailed on the VHF by a boat that we could see to the south. He turned out to be quite a nice chatty humorous Englishman on a 50 foot monohull. We exchanged pleasantries, talked about our crews, fish caught or not, and their main excitement which had been that they had been knocked down last week. He explained that they were in heavy seas and wind, and that a large gust had caught them just right as they were running down a swell and the boat turned over enough that their mast touched the water. No injuries, and no equipment failure.

Today the wind has built and is currently a fairly steady 25 knots bringing with it larger swells yet. We are double reefed on both the main and jib and are maintaining a boat speed of between 7 and 9 knots and as high as 14 knots depending on when we catch and surf the swells. The boat is lurching and swinging wildly at times as I type this.

We just received an email update from ARC that the area just behind us to the east has concentrated thunderstorms and wind gusts of up to 50 knots. Luckily for us, we are just barely ahead of it and will mainly only feel the effects of larger seas coming at us from behind from that area. That will not be the case for a large portion of the 250 yachts in the ARC fleet. We try to plot our positions in relation to the rest of the fleet almost daily, and calculate that we are in the top 60 or so fastest boats. During most of the trip it seems that when either there have been rain squalls, thunderstorms or no wind we have always just missed the worst of it.

Last night after dinner we had experienced a slight problem, in that the batteries had run too low, and computers and radar etc were shutting down. The Volt meter registered under 9. We all scrambled around turning off everything imaginable that was drawing electricity including the inverter and refrigerator and then started both engines in order to build the batteries back up. It was actually a good wake up call to us that we needed to be even more vigilant about electricity usage and keeping the battery up to a higher level at all times. The generator had pooped out on day 2 with Lee and Sebastian working on it the next day and then again 2 days later. It appeared that the main problem might be dirty fuel clogging the fuel filter but there might be other issues as well. Since then we have run one engine or the other to charge the batteries but the alternators on the engines do not have the capacity to deeply charge the house batteries. The photovoltaic cells on the back of the boat help as well during the day. Thankfully the batteries were new 6 months ago.

Last night we implemented a new plan to run an engine when the volts got down to 11.6 and turn off the refer during that time. When the engine wasn’t running we turned off the refer to save usage. Also, we turned off the radar and navigation computer and did visual checks only for boats in the area every 10 minutes instead of every 15 minutes.

This morning Lee and Sebastian took apart the generator again, and after 4 hours we had success. The generator started, and has now been running for 2 hours. Woo Hoo. Dirty fuel was the problem, and of course may come back to haunt us. We still have a half tank of diesel but only 957 miles to go or maybe 6 days. My opinion is that when my Leatherman was used to make a vital repair to trim a fuel line that I had brought a little Oregon luck with me;) Actually Lee and Sebastian have my respect for putting in so much time in a very uncomfortable environment to make these repairs. (The smell of diesel fuel is the worst!)

It is possible that some people at home were concerned about me when they heard that we were having issues with the gen, sat phone, water etc. However, these things have really been a blessing in disguise. The boat is sound and not having unlimited water and phone and email and electricity is only a nuisance or inconvenience but never a safety issue. By having limited water, we have been forced to think about ways to conserve. We wash dishes with sea water. We think twice before ever turning on the faucet and usually turn it on slowly and for only a short period so as not to waste a drop. We have been forced think of new ways to cook and clean etc. Bathing daily and washing hair is not our highest priority.

We are very conscious now of how many luxuries we live with and take for granted. I suspect that we will all take these lessons home with us. Also, when it comes to sailing many mariners over the centuries have crossed oceans with much less than us. The boat that we talked with yesterday did not have a generator or autopilot. They have had to steer by hand the whole way. Thankfully our autopilot is working perfectly and we can adjust the steering from within the cabin.

Having the time of my life,

Teresa Bright, crew

Oregon