Day 86, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Five
Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Weather: Clear Skies; NE Winds 12-15
Latitude: 07 degrees 10.271 minutes N
Longitude: 090 degrees 05.582 minutes E
Miles to Go: 1,088
So far we’ve traveled 505 miles, so that makes us almost a third of the way to Cochin. And the time is passing so quickly. We’ve had another good twenty-four hours with no squalls, good wind, beautiful, starry nights, and bright sunny days. We haven’t even touched the sails all day today. I think that’s a first for us. I know this can’t last forever, but we are enjoying it while it lasts.
Mark has finally given up on trying to get the freezer going, so this afternoon we took what was still frozen and put it in the bottom of the refrigerator and I will cook the unfrozen meat and store it in the refrig. I had to take things out of the refrigerator to make room for the meat, and that prompted us to try something else. The refrigerator box and freezer box are side by side with an insulated wall between them. At the bottom and the top, there is an open slot between the two. We keep those slots closed normally, but we opened the bottom one and hope some of the cold air from the refrig will spill over into the freezer compartment. I put the two dozen eggs that I normally keep in the refrig in that compartment, along with bread, mayonnaise, mustard, pickles, jam, butter, and yeast. Many cruisers never refrigerate these things, but I will be happier if we can keep them a little cooler than room temperature which is in the 80’s. Once we turned off the freezer, our problem with keeping the batteries charged disappeared. The freezer was pulling a much greater load than normal and draining us of power constantly. Hopefully we can get the freezer fixed in Cochin and it will not draw the excessive amount of power any longer. For a while we thought our problem was our batteries, but now we think it was the freezer all along.
And speaking of power issues, Constance has been battling a battery problem for the past two days. They have two-year-old AGM batteries which should still be functioning great, but they are just not holding a charge at all. According to the sources we have with us out here, it looks like they can be jolted back to life in a couple of different ways, but Ed wants to wait until we reach Cochin to try that. Ed thinks it would be prudent to see what is available there before trying the procedures to revive what he has.
Tomorrow is our grandson Sam’s third birthday. It seems just like yesterday that we flew home from New Zealand after the first year of Windbird’s voyage for his birth. His birthday present from both sets of grandparents and Heather and Jed is a kitchen set. He loves to help Heather and Jed cook and the kitchen is one of his favorite areas at the nursery school. Yesterday Heather had been shopping with Sam and Jonah and when they returned home the kitchen set shows up on the front porch in an enormous box with a photo of the contents on the side. Heather wrote, “We got home from the grocery store and I told Sam to head for the front door, as usual (not noticing the box). I heard “holy moly!” and then “it’s for me! a kitchen for me!” So the cat is very much out of the bag. As I was dragging the box into the house (barely possible for a single person), he was chanting “S-U-P! S-U-P!” which it turns out was supposed to be “U-P-S!” (i.e. hooray for the mail man!). He’s been asking to open the box non-stop, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to put him off. So he may get the kitchen early.” So happy birthday a day early to Sam.
