Although my watch should have finished at midnight, Mike lets me sleep until 2 am so I return the favour and leave him until he wakes up naturally just before 7 am. After breakfast I head back to bed and can’t believe it when it is 1.30 pm before I surface again. Mike goes down from 2 pm until gone 5 pm – it’s easy to understand when I say we never really see each other when we are on passage, especially one as uncomfortable as this when the most comfortable place to be is in bed (even if it’s the noisiest place).
The rain lets up for a few hours in the afternoon but then starts again. The wind is less squally but a more constant 25 to 28 knots although the sea remains as lumpy and uncomfortable as ever.
Photo: Huge waves constantly sweep across us
Then at 6.05 pm precisely, with no warning, the generator stops. Our brand new, still sparkling clean, expensive (let’s not deny it) generator. Mike starts it again. It starts then stops. He tries again and the same thing happens. By now it is blowing a gale, raining and the sea is heaving. He puts a jacket and hat, grabs his miner’s head torch and heads outside to the engine room, the entrance to which is right by the steps and the waves are crashing near. He disappears into the black hole while I stand and watch nervously from the doors. After a few minutes he comes back. He can see nothing obviously wrong so hopefully it is just a blocked fuel filter. We know there is some muck at the bottom of the tank from the problems we had the port engine back in Darwin, and the sea is pitching the boat around so much some of it has probably got stirred up and sucked into use. At least that’s what we hope has happened. There’s nothing he can do about it now in the sea conditions and failing light so he puts an engine on to charge the batteries, hoping that the same thing doesn’t happen to that.
To say that it puts a bit of a dampener on the evening it a bit of an understatement. We are already both so fed up with the weather and are exhausted from being constantly thrown around, but I cook some dinner, we watch some TV then I head for bed. The sea state is so bad that I just can’t drop off and eventually I get out of bed and go to the stern cabin which is marginally better. As I pass the salon I glance up at the dials and see the generator is on. What the f***? Mike has done nothing except try it again and it has stayed on. Maybe a bit more lurching around has cleared the blockage. Who knows but we are thankful for small mercies.
Mike is going to let me sleep until 2 am but I am woken by a particularly bad crash and get up to start my watch at midnight.
Our position is: 17 deg 28 min S, 89 deg 12 min E
Distance so far: 14533 nautical miles
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