Galapagos to Marquesas Day 6

Day 6: Thursday 3/21

Hmmmm…..a very good day with one very head scratching fuel incident. First the good news, our speed has picked up to 5.9 – 6.8, averaging >6.2 SOG…..still not the 6.5 kts we want but so much better than the previous days. The ride is ok, not has calm as 60-90 miles to the north but still very acceptable.

Our plan is to make our way to 3 – 3.5S (currently 3 02S) and as soon as we find the favorable current we will turn towards waypoint 3 on our original route 3 35S 113 19W. Per Omni Bob’s advice, the weather router who has been excellent, we are trying to stay as far north as possible to avoid the trough/squalls down south and the subsequent waves/winds. As it is, the further south we go we are getting a more pronounced mixed swell. A big roller, 6-10′, very long period from the SW – Mystic just rides up and over with hardly a wiggle. But the more bothersome is a S-SSE 3-6′ swell, 7-10 sec period with wind chop…..the 3′ ones don’t cause much roll but the occasional 6′ one pretty much on the beam has us grabbing to hold on!!

Nothing to fix today – nice for a change!!!!

Sail: I do believe it is working….maybe helping 0.1-0.3 kts!!!! For most of the day the apparent wind has been 4-8 kts with occasional 10 kts. The angle is forward of the beam around 50-70 deg. When we get >7 kts, the sail has some force on it and the tell tales all flow back as desired. On many occasions I have seen the speed drop and noticed low apparent wind and the sail relaxed and other times, when the speed picks up the apparent wind is up and the sail has a good force on it…..not all the time is this correlated but enough times I’m starting to get optimistic!!!!

Bad news: Encouraged by the pickup in speed by emptying the port fuel bladder, we decided to partially empty the starboard bladder, even though we could only drain about 120 of the 160 gallons. These bladders have been so steady/secure we were not concerned at all w/a partially filled bladder. I transferred some fuel to the starboard tank leaving 40-50 gallon headspace for potential list effect from filling the port tank. This has always been very sufficient in the past, the list change may be causing the starboard tank to measure +10 gallons. I know, you have to stop and think about it for a while and overtime I have just learned to accept this fact.

So we started to fill the port tank and I was in the 115°F sauna ER when I noticed the starboard tank fuel levels immediately start to rise. I rechecked all the valves and everything was correct. I then started to transfer more fuel from the starboard tank to the port tank and ran up to the cockpit to tell Les to stop filling. I then went back to the ER and watched the starboard tank levels start to go down when all of a sudden, the levels rose and the tank was full……crap, crap and more crap. Yep, sure enough, diesel came out the top cover and spilled on top of the tank…..crap, crap, and double crap!!!!! I continued to drain the strb tank to very acceptable levels and then we proceeded to fill the port tank from the bladder. We filled about the 120 gallons we had planned.

I then had the pleasure…..NOT….of spending the next few hours off/on cleaning the top of the tank. I had already placed diapers on top of the tank so most of the diesel was absorbed with these diapers. No diesel ran into the bilge….yeah…..but nevertheless, a disturbing incident and I’m physically still hurting from getting overheated….water is definitely my friend!!!!!

So…what happened…..wise Professor Dobbe has postulated that the baffle inside the tank to dampen fuel movement from the boat rolling caused an air pocket in the forward part of the tank. As we lightened the load in the aft and caused the strb tank levels to rise slightly forward and to port (as we filled the port tank) that was enough to burp this air pocket and thus the fuel spilling out the forward cover. Well….an excellent explanation and one I’m going with!!!!!

After all that misery and mental angst…..we think we got a 0.1-0.2 kt speed gain so definitely we were smart to empty the bladder.

OMG: get this. It’s 5:00am, I’m out in the Portuguese bridge…..one of my brief quiet moments and again mesmerized….started to hum Amazing Grace……now I have not sung that tune since The Big Guy told me to stop singing after the near miss on the fish buoy…..but it just came out…..when all of a sudden something grabs my leg…..I jump 10’….luckily I came back on deck…..yelling, etc……it’s a flying fish…..I yelled so loud I woke Rose up….she comes running up the stairs….. are you all right…..then we both break out in giggles…..she takes a pic….I pick up the fish, give it a talking to as it is still alive…..yes, I know, I’m now talking to fish….time to get worried about John-boy……and then back to sea for this one….yikes……so, absolutely, absolutely no more Amazing Grace……how about The Ring of Fire 🙂 ))))

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Position 3/22 @ 1300 UTC:

Position: 3 06 S 102 59 W

Traveled: 148nm today; 807nm total; 2200nm to go; ETA sometime 4/6,

Course: 257M HDG, 250M COG; being slightly pushed to the south

Wind: for the most part SE <6 kts but had brief periods of SW winds >10 kts from squalls

Waves: Mixed –  6-10′ SW swell; 14 -20 sec period;  3-6′ S-SSE 8-10 sec period with wind chop, ok ride; had to use stabilizers;

Speed: current speed is 6.0 SOG, has varied 5.5-6.8 SOG; avg 6.2 SOG today; 5.85 SOG total for passage (we planned for 6.0 but hope/want 6.5).

Weather: mostly sunny, clouds/squalls to the west and south; several brief squalls during the night but very light; squalls to the west, north and south; sea temp 83 deg F

Boat sightings: 0 today; 4 since we left

Fishing: 1 bonito, 13 total for the trip, but nothing on the grill yet 🙁 ((((

Fuel Burn: After 120 hours we were burning 2.1 nmpg, 336 gallons total, 16 gallons more than our plan….ugh!!! I’m hoping as we burn more fuel and lighten the load as well as our speed gain, we will see better fuel burn #’s….we shall see!!!