Day 8: Saturday 3/23
A good news and bad news sort of day…..the good news is very good and the bad news is a major bother!!!
First the good news – we found the favorable current….YEAH!!!!!!!! Since yesterday around noontime, the speed has ranged from 6.3-7.2……we are doing 7.2 as I write this……oh how sweet it is!!!!!! We are averaging around 6.5 kts SOG, what we had hoped for. And, when the winds are in the 10-15 kt range, the sail is indeed helping 0.1-0.3 kts!!!!!! We will hold this course as long as we can before turning south again. I’m not sure we can make 120W at this latitude and hold speed. We will be in a quandary between going further south and the ride getting more uncomfortable and speed. The seas definitely got rougher as it was beamy all day but still a semi-moderate ride overall (up from calm since we left).
While there is no money down yet, we had our first discussion on betting for the arrival date!!!!! ETA is still sometime 4/5—6.
We set our clocks back one hour yesterday. We are now on Pacific daylight time…..hello boys!!!! Sunrise and sunset had moved too late in the day as we moved further west so we changed and now it feels better!!!!
The bad news……first, I felt terrible. I have never as of yet, knock on wood, had seasickness but I was getting concerned. I felt very tired and mentally very lethargic…..it was a struggle to stay focused, even to get up for my watch. Then I had a case of the runs (like honey, can you get up and take the watch, I have a major session to take care of) and my stomach was a little queasy (I know, TMI….yuck). I still feel it was from the heat….too much ER time and sleeping in sweat (nice image, huh). So, I drank a ton of liquids and tried to stay out of the ER and get some rest. Well, I did well on the liquid thing, but Mystic had other plans for my time….or rather, Mr Fleet Broadband piece of crap Sat phone……yep, it is broke again…major arghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! Today I feel much better….slept hard for 6.5 hours…..brain finally turned off…..still hot, but my body said so what and off to dreamland I went. And mentally, back in the game….
The good news and because of the experience in Panama, we had activated the Iridium as back up. So, out comes the gear and we start the process of setting up…..but wait, we need a serial connection and Les, Kathy and my new Windows 7 laptops do not have one…..oh, double crap…..here is where my brain is very slow on the uptake…..but somewhere in the fog I sort of remember we have a USB/serial adapter….so I go through the drawers and find not 1 but two…..love being me and redundant. I plug it in and get the error message – driver not installed…….then I start to behave like Mark and start ranting nasty things at Microsoft……these converters are two years old and do not work w/Windows 7…….I’m now about to cry…….I still have my old laptop onboard so we hook up the Iridium to it and we get it all to work and we send/receive emails. Good for me but not good for Les. We then start to think about getting Les’ UUPlus account onto my laptop.
At this point, Doc Kathy says enough John-boy, you need a rest….and, oh by the way, while you are napping I’m sure solutions will come to you……whoa, is that a rest or what 🙂 )))))) but, sure enough, I wake up 30-45 minutes later my mind racing on things to try…..so, I get up and go back to work…..and viola, I get a Vista driver to work….oh, happy days. We hook up on Iridium and all is well. When Les gets up from his nap we do the same thing and his laptop is now working…..double happy days……now we know at some point the Iridium will not have satellite coverage but for now all is well.
So back to the piece of crap Mr FBB 150…..it has a GPS communication error….like it does not know where it is and thus can’t find a signal…..hmmm, is the problem the black box again or the antenna…..can’t know. We did repair the old BDU and Les/Rose brought it with them, so over the next few days emailing the technicians we will continue to problem solve!!!! Just one more thing to think about…….ugh!!!!!
Les took over ER duties today……greased the stabs……that’s a tricky and very messy job……he came back all wet and dripping…..thanks bud!!!!! The ER temp is staying 115 – 118 deg F….that’s about 10 deg hotter than what it should be at these low 1200 rpm’s…..the winds are behind us so not a good direction to get good airflow from the outside vents. We will place another fan by the port forward vent to see if we can suck in some cooler fresh air.
We will empty the last fuel bladder today…..they have worked really, really well…..good to have all the fuel in the tanks and the boat trimmed the way we want, but kind of a passing…..like this is all the fuel we have…..no more reserve….gulp!!!!!
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Position 3/24 @ 1300 UTC:
Position: 3 27 S 107 59 W
Traveled: 157nm today; 1108nm total; 1900nm to go; ETA sometime 4/6,
Course: 257M HDG, 260M COG; course is almost due West if use True
Wind: SE-ENE 5-15kts; most of the time 10-15 kts S; yesterday am 15-20 kts when the squalls were at the peak; had squalls over boat yesterday am, started to break up last night
Waves: S 6-10′ swell; 14-20 sec period; had 3-6′ wind chop/swell 3-6 sec S, waters seemed confused at times; moderate to rough ride, all beamy; had to use stabilizers
Speed: current speed is 7.0 SOG, has varied 5.5-7.3 SOG; avg 6.5 SOG today; 6.0 SOG total for passage (we planned for 6.0 but hope/want 6.5).
Weather: mostly cloudy and squally, clouds/squalls all around; several squalls during the day; we could see squalls on the radar most of the day but seem to break up at dusk and overnight; broken clouds now; sea temp 82 deg F
Boat sightings: 0 today; 4 since we left
Fishing: 2 skip jack today, 16 total for the trip; 12 bonitos and 4 skip jack, but nothing on the grill yet 🙁 ((((
Fuel Burn: After 168 hours we are burning 2.2 nmpg, 2.7 gph, 450 gallons total and 2 gallons more than our plan….it’s getting better!
Sail: still think it can help 0.1-0.3 kts but the apparent wind has to be >7kts (it really comes into its own >12kts) and it must be at the right angle as we are limited on the boom placement by the back mast stays and bimini. But, boy, when the conditions are right it is a sweet thing!!!!
