Last night we had some pretty big squalls. Squalls bring rain and a lot of wind. Luckily for me, I slept through the largest one. According to Marc, the wind was in the 30 knts range. On my watch I was not prepared for rain when the first squall came, and I got cold and wet…
On the subject of watches, we do 2 hours on and 4 hours off. My watches are: 4 AM to 6 AM, 10 AM to 12 noon, 4 PM to 6 PM and 10 PM to midnight.
Due to the situation with spinnaker pole and also our reduced crew, we are sailing slower that we would expect we are still making progress towards Hawaii.
This morning, we are contacted by the crew of Second Wind. They were close to us and told us that they lost their ability to steer the boat. They can only steer with their autopilot. They are in our class and that should disqualify them.
Our charging situation was improved today with a sunny day that allowed the solar panels to charge the batteries almost all day. Right now, we are charging the batteries with the engine running on half of the alternator belt that was left. While we are generating power, we also make water. Our tanks are almost full, but this is good precaution. Here is the list of things we use power for (in parentheses the amount of energy the system use:
– Freezer (high)
– Fridge (high)
– Watermaker (very high, used as needed)
– Pump for freshwater and flushing the heads (high, minimum use)
– Radio in standby (low)
– Satellite phone in standby (low)
– Lights inside at night (low/medium)
– Navigation lights at night (low/medium)
– Navigation instruments (medium)
– Music (low)
– Starlink Internet (high, on only a few hours a day)
– Microwave oven (very high, rarely used)
– This computer at the navigation station (medium)
– Autopilot (high, not used during the race)
– Electric winch (very high, not used)
We still run the boat on Pacific Daylight Time, but we are already 2 times zone away from Orange County. Hawaii will be 3 times zone away but only 2 hours difference because they do not observe DST.