Day 38, April 13

I managed to keep the boat sailing the rest of the day and throughout the night. There were frequent episodes of rolling with the sail flapping about, and much as I hated to see that I felt that I had no choice but to keep going. Dawn revealed yet another gray day with much fog/drizzle about The towel and pants I had put out were almost soaked so I would probably wash them this day. There were more birds around the boat this morning, with at least 3 different varieties of shearwaters and petrels.

At 0430 I started the engine for a one hour charging run. All was going well with the sail staying filled and the Monitor continuing to steer the boat. All I had to do was to sit back and monitor the situation. In the 58th minute of the 60 minute run the oil pressure alarm came on and nothing I tried (e.g. recycle the EVC) made it go away. I then used some techniques that Mark had suggested for looking through the oil filler cap for evidence of oil reaching the rocker mechanism and I could see no evidence of oil in motion. I sent a message to Mark hoping for suggestions.

I the meantime I'm already concerned about the boat's electricity supply. I've got enough for a few days of normal use but after that I would have to begin taking severe conservation measures. Maybe I'll get lucky and the engine will perform OK tomorrow after it has cooled down. I shut down the chart plotter because it hadn't been much use other than as an alarm clock.

Graham was back on duty this morning and his wind forecast was worse than I could have imagined. The winds throughout Sunday will be 5-10 kts which in my experience means closer to 5 than 10. For all 24 hours of Monday and the first 6 hours of Tuesday there will be no wind. Then for the next 12 hours of Tuesday the winds will be 0-10 kts. I had been caught by that high and there was nothing that I could do about it.

At 0830 I was forced to roll in the sail because all it was doing was being slapped from side to side by the rolling of the boat. It was time to get philosophical and rely on the current until things changed.

The noon numbers were:

POS 39S45, 89E08
NND 58 nm
DMG 3425 nm
DTG 1376 nm

Somehow we had managed to make 58 nm for the day, but I did not expect any significant progress for the following two days. At least we were well positioned for a direct run to Fremantle when the opportunity came.

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