5/27/2018
Hi All,
Yep…we are on passage to Russia….still a bit hard to believe, a bit surreal for this Kansas boy who grew up in the Cold War!!!
We have had trawler conditions for the first 24 hours…..sweet as!!! The winds and seas are forecast for the next 24 hours to strengthen to 15-20kts, 3-5′ waves, but still stay from the SW which is directly behind us. There is a 1015mb growing to 1025 Hi East of us creating these great conditons!!! GO Mr Hi GO!!!!
Wow…..did we work very, very hard the last 3 days to get ready to take off. We did absolutely no sightseeing at all in Kushiro which is somewhat disappointing. We thought we would have 7-10 days before leaving but this weather window is almost exactly what we wanted so we thought best to take it…..long days!!
John installed the new Balmar regulator, worked on the ESI pump/motor, installed the 100psi T&P valve on the hot water tank, fixed a small leak on the fresh water flush hose on the master toilet, tried to install the new GPS for the CA44 unit, changed Cummin oil and several smaller projects like fueling et al!!
Kathy did several provisioning runs, organized all the safety gear, cleaned, vacuumed, stowed and got ready for Mark!!
Mark arrived as schedule Friday afternoon. As soon as he arrived at the boat (Kathy had gone with Mr Sekisan to pick Mark up while I stayed and fueled Mystic) about 3:15pm, Mr Sekisan took us to Customs and Immigration to check out of Japan. They close at 4pm and are not open on the w/e so to leave on Sunday we had to check out. We and Spruce made it by a few minutes but all worked out…..we had been sweating that one for sure!!!
Boat Stuff:
Balmar Regulator: the new 614 Reg is working as programmed…yea….switched to Absorb/Float as it was supposed to….yea!!!
Racor Gauge: The Cummins gauge had stopped working; installed a new one and this one is also barely registering; hmmm…something not right, no way do we have <1psi vacuum; fuel can’t be that clean!!!
ESI: not working; I did install a new pump but the unit did not work…..ugh!!! With Mark’s help we took it all apart again and discovered the motor shaft was intermittently binding….ugh….and we do not carry the motor as spare. We opened the top plate on the motor and found some crud on the top bearing…we cleaned and greased the best we can, but even just hand turning the shaft it occasionally bound up…..so, bad bearings:(((( We will work with ESI to hopefully get a new motor shipped to Dutch Harbor or maybe if we are very lucky we can find new bearings in Russia. In the meantime we will count on the Cummins racor and spin on filter to do their job….we definitely know the Japan fuel has been ultra clean!!!
Hot Water Tank: the new 100psi T&P valve seems to be working with no leaks although I did see a little water in the bilge on my last engine room check….could be residual from all the various work and cleaning….I hope. At least the fresh water pump has stopped losing pressure and coming on every 5-10 minutes so it seems the leaking T&P valve was the cause of that issue!!
CA44: Major disappointment here….after all my careful research it turns out the new Garmin GPS we bought and Mark brought to us has different connections at the antenna end….so, we would need to cut the cable to install a new BNC connector, which I have, but there was not enough cable on the PH deck to do this….we will need to drop the PH ceiling panels and hope we can create enough cable slack to get this job done…unfortunately we did not have enough time to make this happen so this project remains on the list. In the meantime we will keep running Nobeltec and the CA44 unit off the same Raymarine GPS!!!
Master Toilet: For several days we found water in the master bilge….hmmm, we looked for a leak and found nothing….we sort of concluded condensation as we have started to see a lot of this…..but after I had cleaned the bilge the day before I found too much water back in the bilge the following day for condensation….eventually found the fresh water hose to the toilet was leaking….I was able to tighten the hose clams and no more leak. Unfortunately the next day we had a little water back in the bilge which could be just residual water and from the motion while underway…we shall keep monitoring!!
Stats: May 28 1600UTC (7:00am May 28 Japan time):
Position: 44 09N 147 53E
Traveled: 184nm today; 711nm to go; ETA to Petropavovsk 7-9am Friday, June 1!!!!
Course: 57M COG; we are staying 12-14nm off the Russian islands
Wind: 10-12kts SW and strengthening; had been <10 kts for most of the day
Waves: 1-2′ SW, directly behind us; maybe still a 1-2′ SE swell medium period; ride is smooth
Speed: current speed is 7.5 kts SOG; has varied 7.2-8.2 kts today; avg is 7.6 kts today; 1600rpm
Weather: 100% cloud cover; well, I should say 100% fog….ugh!!!; sea temp 38 deg F; air temp 45 deg F, 68*F cabin temp
Boat sightings: ~5-10; all cargo ships; all taking the great circle route to Canada or USA; some right on our course and some 10-20nm east of us
Fishing: Nope; too, too cold
Sail: down
Fuel burn: too early to take a reading yet!!
Hope all is well!
John
Mystic Moon
GO MYSTIC GO
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