Day 106, Year 6 Atlantic Passage, Day 3
Date: Monday, February 7, 2011 (1730 UTC)
Weather: Mostly Cloudy; Squalls; Winds SSE/SE 15-20
Temperature: Water 75 degrees F; Air 73-78 degrees F
Latitude: 14 02.019 S
Longitude: 010 08.808 W
Miles Traveled: 3503
Miles to Go: 287.71
Location: Passage from St. Helena to Caribbean (Grenada)

The good news is that the wind is still with us and if the South African Maritime Mobile Net is correct, we should have more of the same for five more days. The even better news is that the water maker is WORKING!!! Mark checked the poppet valves and valve seats as suggested in an email from the VP of Operations at Pur and sure enough, that was the problem. Mark had kept some old poppet valves from a previous rebuild and he installed those and that did it. What a relief it is to know that it is working We have enough water on board to make it by being most judicious, but now we can shower and do laundry as needed. I have learned to like doing a first rinse of the dishes with the salt water coming from the pump in the galley sink that Mark installed last week and will continue to use that as I know it saves tons of water. But otherwise, we can go back to using fresh water for everything else. We owe a big thank you to Chris Voxland, the VP of Operations at Katadyn, the manufacturer of our watermaker, who responded to our email immediately, and to Paul of Kire, who gave us Chris’ email address. Paul and Lisa have a smaller Pur watermaker on Kire and they have written to Chris before and have always found his advice right on and his response time immediate. Paul is an engineer and after listening to Mark explain the problem, he was just sure that it was a valve of some sort. He encouraged us to email Chris and we are so glad we did. Katadyn certainly get a thumbs-up from us.

The not so good news of the day is that Mark lost one of his brand new lures. He thought this one was going to be his new lucky lure, but obviously there are fish out here, quite big ones I’d say, as I watched the fishing line jerk with a lot of pull and then go limp. I knew something had taken the lure and when I reeled it in, that was the case. The other not so good news is the continued cloudy weather. We had a break yesterday with some sunshine, but when the sun came up this morning it was amid dark storm clouds overhead and covering the horizon from the northwest to the northeast. All day today we have been going though a line of squalls that just don’t end. The morning started with a good one packing 28 knot winds and lots of rain, but the ones during the day have been what I will call ‘baby’ squalls. The wind increases to 20-22 for about 20 minutes and then it goes back to 15-20. Then a half an hour or so later another dark cloud goes over, the winds increase a bit, and then go back to normal The good side of this is that we are making good time. The aggravating part is that the wind changes direction by ten to twenty degrees during the ‘baby’ squalls and we have to constantly adjust course to keep from back-winding the sails. This is always true when sailing wing ‘n wing, but even more so when there are constant wind direction changes. But we’d best not complain because we seem to be the only boat with wind out here right now. The boats trying to get to St. Helena are still struggling with no wind and Odulphus finally left Simon’s Town yesterday but had not even made it to Hout Bay by this morning. There is absolutely no wind at the Cape, so they were going into Hout Bay and wait. We know we will have our turn with no wind, but we are super grateful that at least we are getting a running start.

We are down to one time of day when we can send and receive emails. We have always checked email in the morning and then again in the evening when we send the log. But Mark tried and tried this morning starting at 3:30 am and I continued until 6:30 am, but had no luck. We have to run the engine when trying to send and we can’t afford to use that much fuel trying in vain to send and receive. So right now we can only get on in the evening. If there is a little lag time in my response to any emails it is because of this. But at least we can still get out once a day.