Monday, August 11, 2008

8/10/08



Sandy and I came on watch at 08:00 to relieve Matt and Lorraine. Slept well after my midnight - 04:00 shift and woke up at 07:30. Tried to connect to sailmail and used 10 precious minutes of connection time before bailing on the slow transfer. It seems our most favorable connection time is between 16:00 and 18:00 hours. Corpus Christi has been very good to us in the past 24 hours.

We started motoring at 08:09. The tachometer does not work so Sandy and Matt are using their ears as our tachometers searching for the sweet sound of 2500 RPMs. The Hobbes meter is no longer recording hours of motoring (needs to work in conjunction with the tach) nor does the fuel gauge so Sandy has been maintaining a log and calculating fuel consumption. We are doing great!

Yesterday Sandy wanted to refuel the diesel. In Kaneohe, Dave E's original pump failed so he and Matt cobbled together a hand pump with a siphon from West Marine, some hose and a bung along with a few other things. The system works great - it takes about 15 minutes to siphon the diesel from a 5-gallon jerry can. The hand pump starts the siphon at the jerry can. The siphon was modified to connect to a hose leading down from the cabin top to a bung placed in the fuel port. Sandy was working the siphon while I surrounded the bung with a rag to sop up any water coming on board. Conditions were light yesterday so we pumped nearly 3 jerry cans of diesel filling the tank to the top. We can't count on conditions being this light in the future.

We are currently at lat N 32 32, long 155 03 placing us on top of 3000 fathoms of water. One fathom equals 6 feet so the water depth is 18,000 feet or over 3.5 miles down to the sea floor. We are motoring through the high which is something to behold. The wind has dropped below 1 knot and the swell is nothing more than a ripple; glass-like water you would never expect in the ocean. It has been a photographic dream and I am so glad I brought the 40D. I have amazing pictures. In any case the opportunity to swim in 18,000 feet of water does not always present itself so I jumped off Compromise into clear blue water that is still warm - 81 degrees. Dove down under the boat and looked at the keel, rudder, and prop. Lorraine joined as well but preferred to be back on the boat, not wanting to be food for some monster surging up through the waters.

We are all ready to get back to the business of sailing again. It's been incredible in the high but I'm ready for a some more Compromise Curtsey shaking this boat's booty through the swells.

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