Day 17 - 500 Miles To Go

After a quiet night when for the first time during the passage I had used a second blanket I woke up at 7 AM to the intermittent hum of the Rutland. I immediately got up and at 7.15 AM we were sailing to the SE under Jeff's control. While having coffee I watched the wind increase then decrease again to the below 9 kts causing the headsail to fret. Jeff couldn't cope when our boat speed dropped to below 2 kt and I switched over to the autopilot.

At noon our position was 36S00, 022W43, giving us a n-n distance of 40 miles in the direction 107T. We were now 507 miles from TdC, making 3-4 kts with a weak and variable wind. The barometer had risen one point to 1020 hPa.

I am not out of the woods regarding the Monitor problem. I had trouble getting it to steer and when I had a close look I discovered that the pendulum had plenty of travel to the port side of the boat but hardly any to the starboard side. Twice I went over the back rail and adjusted (ie lengthened) the actuator shaft that I had uncoupled two days earlier. The problem may have manifested itself because we are on a different tack today, and the adjustment seemed to help. However, the wind is proving to be so difficult (ie variable and weak) that I am not able to give the Monitor a fair test and am relying on the autopilot. I will not rest easy about the Monitor until it has had a few more successful days.

The day before I had checked the engine oil and coolant levels as well as belt tension and it occurred to me that this was the perfect setting for a refueling operation: clear sunny day and the boat sailing gently with no spray flying around. It would be my first chance to use the new hand pump that I had purchased in the USA. The engine was at 339 hours and it had been run 20.2 hours since the tanks had been topped up at Bracui. My worst case estimate was 50 liters consumed but I expected it to be less because I had been running the engine at only 1500 rpm during the battery charging runs.

That pump transformed refueling from a laborious and messy operation involving an open bucket to a faster, much cleaner one. The next transfer will be even cleaner because I learned today to tie the fuel container in place and also tie the outlet hose to the rail so that the end will stay well inside of the Baja filter. That will leave me to concentrate on pumping. The diesel that I purchased at Bracui was darker than the top quality fuel that I had purchased at the filling station at Mar del Plata. It left quite a bit of gritty residue at the first (coarse) filter and before I put the Baja filter away I ran some diesel through it in reverse and successfully flushed most of the grit out. Even though I had added anti algae additive to the fuel in the containers at Bracui I added another dose into the Baja filter before I started pumping the fuel.

I estimate that I added 31 liters to the tanks to fill them to the brim, yielding an average consumption of 1.53 liters per hour. At this moment there are 140 liters of diesel in the internal tanks and 170 liters on deck in containers, making a total of 310 liters. That represents an estimated 207 hours of running at 1500 rpm. (That's 8.6 days, but let's not get too excited because at 1500 rpm the boat makes only about 2.5 kts.)

Afterwards I stripped down, washed down the cockpit with salt water, then gave myself a fresh water bucket bath primarily to wash the diesel off my legs.

At 3.45 we were 495 miles from TdC but the sail was having a hard time coping with the 7-8 kt wind and I decided to try the whisker pole on the sail. The job turned out to be reasonable straight forward and went well, partly because conditions were gentle and partly because I had lubricated the latches of the pole and jury rigged a release cord as part of the preparations for this passage. The results were good. We were now sailing more downwind and the sail was fretting less violently. We were making 2.7 kts before an apparent wind of 6-7 kts. It had been a disappointing sailing day with the wind speed half of that predicted by the grib file but I was trying to make the best of it.

Our progress to date can be summarized as:

- 1500 miles to go on day 6
- 1000 miles to go on day 10
- 500 miles to go on day 16

At 6 PM I had had enough an lay the boat ahull. The wind was so light that the weight of the whisker pole was threatening to put it in the water and we were making 2.1 kts. I just wasn't prepared to spend the night listening to the sail flapping and watching the autopilot for 2.1 kts. We were drifting SW at 0.7 kts so at least we were headed south. I was so pissed off that I cracked a second beer.

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