Last night my watch was pretty interesting. Before retiring for some well deserved rest, Isabel helped me stow the screecher and trim the jib and main. We’d had some very light squally conditions during the day but there were still threatening cells on the horizon, and it’s a lot easier to secure the screecher with two bodies than just me.
Isabel crashed around 1900 in the aft bunk which happens to be just above the starboard engine. Around 1945 a squall with light rain arrived, bringing the apparent wind up towards 20 knots for a few minutes, so with full main and jib we were bopping along at 8 - 9 knots for a while before the wind event passed. By 2010 the wind was basically GONE so rather than bob around aimlessly I elected to fire up a diesel and make tracks, expecting the wind to return within 1 - 2 hours after clearing the storm system area. I stowed the jib and hardened the main sheet first to reduce sail flogging. Because it’s a few hours running time behind the port engine I began to fire up the starboard engine, then remembered that it would make a lot of noise and vibration below Isabel’s sleeping bod, and would heat up that aft cabin a bit.
Ever thoughtful husband that I am (hah), I instead elected to fire up the port engine, however it refused to come to life. It turned over just fine at first then the slightly tired engine start battery just couldn’t turn it very quickly. In any case it refused to start, so I had to hand prime the fuel pump (there’s a little lever on it) about 50 strokes. As well, I enabled the bus tie so the monstrously powerful and fully charged house battery bank could spin the engine over, and boy it started in a flash. First into reverse to get the magic Gori prop in overdrive mode, then forward and up to our standard 2400 rpm cruise power setting.
I’ve been chasing some sort of vacuum leak on that engine for a while, and thought I’d fixed it more than once but occasionally the engine just needs priming. Guess I’ll ping my close friend Spike Webb who’s a diesel genius to get some guidance on troubleshooting. Anyway, once started the engine performed flawlessly as usual and within about 40 minutes the wind was back and I had rolled out the jib and trimmed the sails, and we were off and running. I reckon that was a good use of diesel.
Today we’ve had a couple of threatening squalls and the wind has generally been light. When we’re not wondering if we’re about to be smited, we roll out the screecher and add a couple knots of groundspeed. With today’s threat environment the screecher got deployed and stowed several times, but now we’re done with supper and the sky has cleared and the air is much drier. The wind is still light but as it looks like one of those benign nights Mr. Screecher is going to help us lay on some miles. We’re racing to beat a high pressure system’s Western movement and while we’ll likely fail at that it’s at least a goal. A secondary goal is to at least catch up and pass all the other boats in our general area. We’ve got a tracking group setup on our PredictWind Offshore app and we’re monitoring the position and velocity vector of three other vessels, and we’ve got a fourth vessel we’re exchanging occasional data with over the Iridium Go texting app. Gives us something to do.
A small female mahi mahi tried to become a resident of our fridge about an hour ago but she came off the hook before we could get the gaff in her. Just as well, she wasn’t more than 2 - 3 meals and we’d rather she make a bunch of babies we can eat later. Maybe we can catch her larger bull boyfriend and she can go shopping for a new sweetie.
We’re 333 miles and 55 hours into our passage, with an average speed of 6.1 knots. About 10% of the way there. The wind won’t let us point in the direction we’d like, but we’re keeping the boat moving North. We’ll make landfall SOMEWHERE in July. . .
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