What a truly ghastly day – on all fronts.
When I wake up and Mike brings me a cup of tea, the look on his face tells me immediately that something is very wrong. The generator. When he switched it on during the night, although it stayed on, it produced too high a voltage for the inverter so it couldn’t be used to charge the batteries. We are both so pissed off that this new, very expensive bit of kit is not working as it should, and along with the vile, vile weather, which continues to be grey, squally and produce very uncomfortable seas, it sets the mood for the day.
Having had little sleep during the night due to the noise, I am not able to deal with this very well, and while Mike goes on to the SSB to do the morning position broadcast, I lie in bed like a pathetic lump and cry.
Eventually, after giving myself a mental kick up the backside, I get up to find Mike lying in the salon reading the Westerbeke generator manual – exciting stuff. He fiddles with the inverter settings and manages to get it to accept a slightly higher voltage that it would like, and by running the water maker and the air conditioning ie putting a high load on the generator, the remaining output level is just low enough to please the inverter and it starts charging the batteries. The trouble is we can’t make water every few hours as we just don’t need it so we will have to use the engines to charge the batteries most of the time, and they do it far less efficiently than the generator and use more diesel doing it. Bloody boats.
Mike e-mails Boat Power, the company that installed the generator in Mackay in the hope that they have some ideas.
Late in the afternoon, it actually stops raining and the radar shows no squalls for the first time since we started out. The sun doesn’t make it out, although the thinner cloud shows that it’s behind there somewhere. I lie on the sofa and pass the time doing sudoku while Mike sleeps. The cockpit is still soggy and salty and I have no wish to lie out there looking at the unending grey. I have never known a weather system hang around as long as this, although the truth is probably that it is not hanging around at all but travelling in the same direction as us. Wonderful. Then Mike explains that the longer the high winds hang around, the bigger the waves gradually get, meaning this will get worse before it gets better. Even more wonderful.
Mike goes out into the cockpit armed with a glass of water which he throws over the SSB antennae, the explanation being (when he sees the look of incredulity on my face) that it works better when it’s wet and of course it has now stopped raining. Don’t ask! Maybe he’s lost the plot now as well as me!
I see a little boat shaped blob appear on the radar, but with all the squalls showing, it’s difficult to ascertain whether it really is a boat. However, AIS informs us that a huge cargo ship, the Wugang Orient, will come within half a mile of us so Mike calls them on the VHF then changes course so that they pass two miles away instead. As I watch this huge thing appear out of the gloom, I thank God that we have some technology to help us as I wouldn’t have noticed her if I had been on watch just using my eyes until she was relatively close.
We have decided to try out a 5 hours on, 5 hours off watch system, so I head off to bed around 9 pm. I hope tomorrow is better.
Our position is: 17 deg 59 min S, 86 deg 36 min E
Distance so far: 14692 nautical miles
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