Day 32 (27 Nov) - Bilge Pump Repaired

The SE trade wind has its moods. As the sun fell to the horizon yesterday the wind speed dropped so much that I decided to shake out my second reef before nightfall. Thirty minutes after that there was light rain and when I looked around I felt as though I had been transported back to the ITCZ. The wind dropped to below 10 kt and the boom started to slam. Fortunately that was a temporary disruption associated with the rain and slowly the wind speed began to build up. Two hours later the star lit sky was very clear again. The wind stayed moderate until midnight and the boat speed was about 4 knots.

The polar weather fax at 2.30 AM showed the big South Pacific high centered on the longitude 125W. The relevance is that if I find myself sailing through the center of that high I'll also find myself drifting with little wind. It made me re examine the question of how far west to go in my quest for the Horn. The Ocean Passages chart of the world sailing routes showed the main sailing route between the west coast of North America and the Horn as passing west of Ducie Island for the months of Dec-Feb. This made sense to me because it would increase my chances of passing on the west side of the SE Pacific high. This was all a bit of a surprise for me because most similar passages to the Horn that I've read about tracked near Easter Island. I emerged from this middle of the night session more relaxed about which side of Ducie Island I would pass. I'll continue to sail as best as I can, and if the resulting track takes me west of Ducie Island which is at longitude 124W50 then so be it.

By 3 AM the wind had picked up enough to make the boat a bit frisky so I rolled in some headsail and reduced our speed to 5 kt.

I went to bed thinking how so soon after the bushfire crises of Western Australia we now have large swaths on the E side of the continent inundated and isolated by flood waters.

I woke up at 8 AM still sleepy and wooly headed. It had been a rough but tolerable night and I had managed to get some good sleep. As usual the first thing I did upon rising was to look at the situation on the chart plotter and everything was fine. Our COG was centered around 170T and we were making an average of about 4.7 kts. Boat speed per se was not an issue. I could have easily taken the boat to 6-6.5 knots by rolling out more sail. The issue was the state of the sea and I was unwilling to make the boat pound any harder.

At noon our position was 14S01, 122W41, giving us a n-n distance of 106 miles. We had moved another 1.8 degrees to the south. I was pleased that hardening into the wind had arrested our movement to the west. The boat was moving well with her single reef, staysail, and tiny headsail; making 4-4.5 kts at 165T into a stiff apparent wind of 18 or 19 knots. I've been plotting my noon positions on a paper chart and this day I had to pull out another chart to make the plot, which was a tangible sign of progress.

At 11 AM I began the task of repairing the manual bilge pump in the cockpit. The big fear in these kind of jobs is one snag that turns the project into an ordeal. It could be a seized screw or maybe a hose that won't slide off. Fortunately there were no such glitches and the job turned out to be pretty straightforward. (For the record, the service kit for the Titan Whale Gusher pump is numbered AK4400.) I removed the pump and took it into the cabin. There I swapped in every item provided in the kit including the diaphragm, inlet and outlet valves, screws, circlips, and the stainless steel spring for the exhaust valve. At 2 PM the refurbished pump was back in place and tested out OK.

After having spent over an hour rolling around the cockpit floor with the top half of me inside of the lazarette working while the water swirled around my shoulders I figured that deserved a bath, so I spent a pleasant 30 minutes under the midday sun enjoying a leisurely salt water bath with plenty of shampoo. I then rinsed off with 2 liters of fresh water, dried off, then put on my first fresh set of underclothes in about a week. (Yes I know, on Pachuca luxury has no bounds.)

We went into the night with Pachuca ambling along at 4 kt, course 170T.

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