Day 41, April 16

It turned out to be a more difficult night of sailing than I had expected. My spot forecast had indicated winds steadily increasing throughout the night. However, that forecast was 2 days old because I had not received a more recent one in order to minimize air time on Sailmail. Graham's afternoon report had also indicated a rising wind, but his spot forecasts were abbreviated to 12 hours apart due to transmission difficulties.

In fact the wind began to die at sunset. Three hours later the wind was down to perhaps 6 or 7 kts but the boat was still able to maintain heading. I had good fortune in that the swell was coming from the SW and we were headed NE so that the boat was rocking (like a hobby horse) rather than rolling, which had little affect on the sails. In the middle of the night I was up again to attend to the fretting headsail. The wind was down to just a puff - maybe 5 kts. I rolled in most of the headsail then watched for a while. I had put a preventer on the boom, so there was no banging. The sea was so calm that the sail filled from side to side gently and I was not worried of undue stress. I had never experienced it before: the boat seemed suspended in the water with its double reefed mainsail and partial headsail out. However, I knew from the laptop that we were making some way, no doubt helped by the following gentle swell as well as the current. I decided to try to wait it out because I did not want to drop the mainsail in order to avoid extra deck work, particularly at night, and loss of momentum. I went back to bed and hoped that things would get better.

I was up at the crack of dawn to find that the wind had improved to the point where there was no longer a danger of being forced to drop sails.

Things got even better. I made an early connection to Sailmail and downloaded a spot forecast for every 3 hours over a period of 3 days. To my relief the report was good. It showed a wind of 9.7 kts at the moment, which was about right, and up to 11.8 kts at UTC noon, in 3 hours. Thereafter I could expect winds in the mid teens for the next 2 days.

And I was was happy that I had patiently held back for a day with the engine awaiting more advice from Mark. I received his reply and I had identified the wrong part to remove. All I had to do was to look further down and see the oil pressure sensor with the two nuts as he had described earlier. I would remove the sender after a 4 PM radio session to listen for possible communication from Jim Putt at the Fremantle Sailing Club. Fortunately I had good access to the sender. I would begin the job by jamming rags, sheets, towels and whatever else was required below the work area to prevent any tool or part that I might drop from winding up in the bilge.

The oil sender operation went well. I took my time with the preparation and execution and all went well, as far as that went. I found a bit of moist rust on the face of the harness of the wires to the sender so I washed everything out with jets of electronic cleaner. I removed the sender (15mm spanner for adapter, 23mm spanner for sender) and found no debris on the face, just clean clear oil. The sender had a thin aperture that I could not see into so I washed out the aperture with generous amounts of electronic cleaner. After waiting for 5 minutes for the cleaner to evaporate I put the sender back in place and soon started the engine hoping for a good result.

The engine ran for 35 minutes at 2300 rpm when the oil pressure alarm came on. It was most disappointing but at least the batteries had received some precious charging. The engine seems to run OK for a while after it has had time to cool down. I might be reduced to running the engine every day for as long as I can to try to keep those batteries charged up.

Our noon numbers (actually 0800 UTC) were:

POS 39S26, 91E57
NND 87 nm
DMG 3565 nm
DTG 1244 nm

Those 87 miles had been with weak and variable winds, and we were lucky to have achieved that. I was looking forward to the forecast start of the serious wind at 1200 UTC, four hours away.

I examined the day's wfax and everything to our north was a mess of big highs, little highs, little lows, trough lines cutting across the highs, and even a tropical cyclone to the NW undoubtedly causing its own disruptions to the weather pattern. We were positioned just to the north of a trough between two highs with gentle gradients and it was a wonder that we had any wind at all. I could see hope in the south, where a cold front from a deep low at roughly 50S, 70E was headed our way.

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