A rather frustrating day at sea

Tuesday, June 24, 3 pm
Frustrating

We are in a hole and have no way up out of it unless we start the engine.
The winds have been soft and from just south of east, which is the direction of Bermuda. Since we can point only to 70 degrees from the wind, any course we take gets us closer to Bermuda in tiny increments. Our hope is for a wind shift, and wind increase.

Although we have only 140 nm to go if we could take a straight line course, the miles to sail before we get there are over 200, and at 5 kts, that would be 40 hours, or Thursday. Sadly, we are not even able to do 5 kts; currently we are snailing along at 3 kts.

Last night, it appeared that our masthead navigation lights were not on. Aurora, sailing a mile from us, confirmed so we are using the running lights instead which we would normally use when motoring. I spent couple hours this morning checking the circuit and it appears that we have power to the base of the mast. So, we plan to go up the mast once in Bermuda to fix or replace the problem.

Then, later, running the generator because the new batteries had insufficient charge to run the chart plotter, the generator stopped charging the batteries because of overheating. With the aft gen compartment open, the same occurred. So, we started the boat engine to charge using the alternator, but were unable to accelerate the engine without it going into gear. I disassembled the clutch cable mechanism at both the control end, and by going deep into engine compartment, at the transmission end. After a couple more hours, everything was put back together and, surprisingly or even miraculously, it all works. There was a time when I thought we might need to get towed into Hamilton or St. George with no useable engine.

We just finished an experiment suggested by Peter. We are going so slowly that we tried sacrificing even more angle to get more speed by using the spinnaker. Well, we achieved both: terrible angle taking us even further away from Bermuda but at increased speed. So, back to sailing. Peter has been a fantastic sailing companion. Always upbeat, resourceful.

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