DAY 25 - Oils aint oils........

My sailing did not last long yesterday afternoon. Shortly after completing my noon report I rolled up the jib due to lack of wind. The latest grib file told me to expect wind later on the following day, so it was going to be 24 hours of taking it easy while the boat rolled in spasms.

The previous week I had finished reading President Obama's book "Dreams of My Father." He really bared his soul about some major existential problems in his life (mainly about his racial mixture and his place in life), so I don't recommend it to anyone who does not want to get too far into someone else's head. For me the book was great because I think that I it has helped me to understand the man and better yet, reassured me that the man understands himself and is comfortable with himself. This self-knowledge is particularly important for someone in such a position of power. (Think of the boozing John Gorton or Australia or the tormented and isolated Richard Nixon.) Anyway, today I started on a light but interesting book on true-life sea stories.

I took advantage of the quiet time to slide back the engine cover and have a look around. I tightened the belts on the big alternator a bit. There is a problem with the belt tightening bolt for the small alternator but the belt should be tight enough to see me through this passage. The oil level was OK and all of the hoses and clamps looked OK.

Richard surprised me a few days ago by being as far as I can recall the only person I know who had heard of the Norwegian-made SABB diesel. He knows them well. He says that their downfall is the salt water cooling, something that has been bothering me all along. I had the salt water pump diaphragm and anodes replace in NZ and the unit seems to put out a lot of cooling water but it will be something to keep an eye on.

Three spare water containers started sliding around in the back so I emptied them - 38 liters total - into the starboard tank.

My communication reception was not the best last night. Everyone including Richard seemed to hear me OK, so that I know that I am transmitting at full power. Ryan was becalmed but Richard was sailing well, though I think still to the north. Ryan relayed a message from me to Richard that the 48 hour forecast indicated pretty good southerly winds for him. Chris's weather data indicated that I could expect good winds after this lull.

After a long quiet night of plenty of sleep I woke up to find Pachuca still becalmed in a 3 kt wind on a sea that looked like undulating light oil, drenched in a fog that gave maybe 100 meters of visibility. AIS told me that the ship "YM Success" would cross my stern at 5 nm on her way to Pusan at a brisk 20 kt speed. During breakfast I concluded that it was a good time to run the engine again and build up the a/h on the house bank. Once the wind came I would be most reluctant to fire up the engine. I ran the engine for one hour and found Pachuca doing a consistent 5.5-5.6 kt through the oily sea with the 22 hp 2-cyl diesel turning over 1200 rpm.

Because the visibility was so poor and I was on the move I thought it prudent to turn on the radar. Radar on a calm wide-open sea is a piece of cake. I could see the ship at the correct range and bearing. Sea clutter was minimal (though by now I know how to deal with that). There was nothing else within radar range. The ship target was occasionally showing up as a short arc along the track of the scan. This is described in the book as a "side lobe", where energy from the transmitted radar pulses is radiated outside of the narrow beam. OK, so now I know how to recognize the illusion from side lobes. At Ala Wai I consistently saw another effect: "multiple echoes" where there is a wide vertical surface at close range and the radar pulse bounced back and forth between the target and Pachuca, giving the effect of successively smaller targets one behind the other on the same bearing. The other thing I'll have to look for is the "intermittent and poorly defined" "ghost image" of an "indirect echo" which also appears to be the effect of a ricocheting radar beam. I'm only a novice at radar but the message I get is that when I see something it will really be something, but when I see several somethings it may mean just the one something with several side effects.

At 7.30 AM - 40 minutes after engine shutdown - I heard the Rutland wind charger humming. I put on my life vest/safety harness for the first time in 24 hours and went on deck. Fortunately the boat was pointing east and the wind was on my starboard quarter. I rolled out the jib to a 1.5, set my course to 060 magnetic and soon Pachuca was doing 4.2 knots toward just south of Cape Flattery. The whole thing took less than 2 minutes. The advertisement was correct: Oils Ain't Oils.

The evening before I had received a message from Jim at Sailmail Tech Support suggesting that I remove the GPS receiver from the Acer and lower the Sailmail baud rate by half from 115200 to 57600. The idea was to reduce the load on the USB ports. He said that there had never been an issue with USB load but it was easy enough to try. In the meantime he would look into the error message that I had sent in earlier. I implemented the changes last night in preparation for this morning's weather fax downloads.

This morning I successfully downloaded 11 weather faxes without one error. It will be a few days before I can give a final verdict on whether these changes represent a successful workaround, but I am confident because I have yet to see a "remission" last as long as 11 faxes.

At noon Pachuca was at 45.43N,135.50W, 480 nm from Cape Flattery. We had a noon-noon distance of 25 nm after being becalmed for almost 24 hours. Happily, the boat was moving again toward Cape Flattery at 5 kt.