Day 16 - Inventory of Refrigerator

I woke up at 4 AM to find that the wind had strengthened, we were doing over 6 kts, and the sail was occasionally fluttering, so I rolled in some sail to bring our boat speed to 4.5 kts and went back to sleep in a more comfortable boat.

At 8 AM I woke up and saw nothing but blue sky through the cabin hatch. It was going to be another sunny day and we were still moving well toward the island in front of a 17-18 kt apparent wind. Jeff the Monitor had kept us on course without a problem all night.

The grib file predicted a 12 hour lull in the wind during the coming night but in the following morning it would pick up again.

Tristan da Cunha lay 560 miles almost to the east at bearing 099T. Five days earlier I had estimated landfall to be 19-23 December, depending on assumptions on average daily distance made good. After the rough patch of the previous few days my best estimate was now 22 December, give or take a day. I had originally planned to shape a course for TdC as an arc to the south of the rhumb line partly to take some advantage of great circle sailing, but mainly to reach the higher latitudes more quickly in the expectation of more reliable winds. Unfortunately I succumbed to the temptation of sailing directly for the island whenever possible because on a flat Mercator projection the rhumb line looks like the shortest distance. Day after day the grib files covering only 2 degrees of latitude consistently showed stronger winds to the south. The only exception to that was the beating that we had taken in that gale 2 or 3 days previously. I had asked the ship during the gale when the weather would break officer must have heard just the word "weather" because he told me that the wind was from the north at forty-garbled knots. Given the wind speed numbers that I was reading I dismissed the notion that the wind was in the '40s but thinking back on those waves high enough to break at the tops leading to a cascades of foam running down their faces I began to think that the officer was correct. After looking up the descriptions of the Beaufort scale and I would still call it a gale, Force 8, but at the upper end of its 34-40 kt range. Why so strong contrary to what the grib file predicted? Without the benefit of the comprehensive picture from a weather fax I think that it is highly probable that I wound up in a "squash" zone between the advancing low with its clockwise rotation on the west and centered slightly to the south and a high with its counter clockwise rotation to the east, rendering the east sector of the low a maelstrom. Grib files of such a tiny patches of the ocean that I request (currently 2 degrees latitude by 3 degrees longitude) are derived inductively from "big picture" computer models and are quite likely to miss those hot zones.

At noon our position was 35S48, 023W31, giving us a n-n distance of 104 miles in the direction 116T. We were now 550 from Tdc, which was slightly south of E at 097T.

Most of the birds that have flown near the boat seem to have been petrels. I have identified Great Winged petrels and Soft Plumaged petrels. I'm sure that there have also been storm petrels. I suspect that there has also been the occasional albatross and maybe I'll be able to make a firm identification as my perception of sea birds sharpens. [Much later while having a beer a small one flew by, which according to the book was a White Bellied storm petrel.]

My task for the day was to clean out the refrigerator compartment and take an inventor of its contents. Both the refrigerator and ice box compartment are connected to a common drain that passes through a valve and to a short section of hose for directing the outflow. Both compartments build up water over time due partly from the degeneration of their contents and partly because during heavy weather while on a starboard heel any substantial amount of water that sweeps under the spray dodger and over the main hatch will wind up partly in the galley below. This is with a standard design of sliding hatch and there is nothing that I can do about it other than avoid sheet of water over the cabin.

I removed from the refrigerator one plastic bag at a time, removing anything spoiled, and counting the survivors. I was forced to throw overboard about 5 tomatoes, one capsicum, 2 or 3 oranges, a couple of carrots, and one mango that I had forgotten about. Losing the tomatoes was painful, but reinforced the lesson that there is no point in hoarding perishables only to lose them from spoilage. I would have done better throwing an additional tomato into each of my bean stews.

The current inventory in the refrigerator is as follows:

- 5 slices of bread (enough for 2 more breakfasts)
- 4 jars of bread yeast
- 8 cans of beer
- 34 eggs
- Cheese, 5 packs of about 1 kg each (I couldn't find the weights on the labels.)
- 3 capsicums (green peppers)
- 17 potatoes
- 15 onions
- 13 carrots
- 8 oranges
- 3 apples
- 2 limes
- 2 bunches of garlic
- 2 bananas

The beer had been at the bottom of the refrigerator in order to keep the other contents above any water than might accumulate. However, I discovered that the bottoms of the beer cans were starting to corrode, so I placed them all in the freezer compartment.

I have been neglecting the apples and oranges and will start eating at least one daily.

I was surprised at the number of eggs remaining, and I will resume the practice of eating one egg with my main meal in the evening and perhaps give myself the occasional treat of several fried eggs.

I've been a bit easy on the cheese too, for weight loss purposes. However, although all of the sealed cheese is still intact I'd better kick up the pace of consumption.

Once the refrigerator was empty I had to get on my knees and start draining the water from the two compartment into a small plastic container which I would then empty onto a larger bucket. Several times the water stopped draining while there was still water in the compartment, which meant a blockage in the drain hoses. This brought on the heroic part: putting my mouth at the end of the drain hose with the rotting solution passing through it and blowing hard, to force out the obstruction through the other end. It isn't pleasant but somebody's gotta do it. When the compartments were drained I put a few liters of sea water into the refrigerator compartment, added some bleach, and scrubbed the slime off the bottom and sides. I drained this, flushed about of clean sea water through, gave the bottom of the compartments a wipe, then loaded the refrigerator back up, and that was the end of the task.

I had put aside a banana and an apple for lunch but for some reason I wasn't too hungry at the moment.

The wind began to die down and back at about 3 PM. By 4 PM we were eking out 2.8 kts toward the ENE with the wind at less than than 9 kts. I expected to lie ahull all night and in the morning begin sailing with a gentle breeze from the NNE and this would mean more downwind sailing.

At 5 PM I decided to use the last of the stability provided by the sail to attend to the spray dodger. Sections of its bolt rope along the front had jumped out of the track and I had to loosen the entire dodger in order to re-thread it. By the time I finished the headsail was fretting wildly and at 5.30 PM I rolled it up and let the boat drift. It would be a night of bouts of heavy rolling, but that could not be helped. I tied the Monitor control sheets with the lines that I had set up before and it kept the watervane nicely centered all of the time. I should have set that up years ago.

At 6 PM I started the engine and motored to the SE for 2 hours while I watched "Black Hawk Down" and monitored the status of the autopilot. (It didn't fail.) A 8 PM after shutdown I admired the evening for a few minutes. The sky was mostly clear, there was a sliver of a moon out, barely a breeze, and best of all the sea had calmed down amazingly during those two hours.

I've been meaning to mention that the drinking water from the main tanks has not been rusty, as it was during my long passage around the Horn. Perhaps rust had accumulated in the bottom of the tanks during the 20 months of mainly sedentary life in La Paz and then got stirred up during the passage. Anyway, whatever rust may be in the water now is not detectable by sight or taste.

The gas cylinder is showing signs of losing pressure. When the time comes I can quickly switch to the small backup cylinder with the flip of a lever, which will allow me to swap in the other large cylinder which has been riding against the pulpit.

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