Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Already the days are merging, one into another. The wind decreased in the morning so we put out the code zero sail. I finished the Time Travelers Wife which left me a little sad. The wind picked up again in the afternoon. We were making such good progress that Steve decided to leave the code zero up at sunset. I wasn’t too keen as the last time we had it up at night, the wind increased and tore our code zero while on my shift. Bringing down the code zero at night is also difficult. All three of us has to be up to do it easily which means waking two people up from their much needed sleep. However the wind seemed consistent and the thought of making good progress throughout the night finally swung us.

When I took over from Steve at 11pm the wind was a little stronger but still within the safe strength for our code zero. We were making excellent progress and regenerating too. I kept an close eye on the the wind for a couple of hours and all was fine. Then I began to notice these occasional gusts were the wind really picked up. Quickly it would go back to normal strength and I would relax. However these gusts began to come more often and I began dithering. Should I fall off and release the pressure on the sail just in case these gust should continue increasing. This would mean going off our track and heading more west than our preferred south heading. Or should I wake up the boys and bring down the code zero. We could then put up the main and head sails and continue with our preferred heading. I dithered too long. There was a sudden bang the code zero tore from top to bottom!

For this passage, my first watch of the day starts at 5am ship time, the first hour of which is in the dark. I usually use this time to write my blog waiting for light. As we progress west this hour of darkness will lengthen to include my whole watch which I’m not looking forward to.

Anyway. At day break I made a final tally of marine life caught overnight: 5 and 2. That means 5 flying fish and 2 squid were found on the deck. That includes the flying fish that made it into my bunk. About the same time I put out our four trolling lines which were to prove as fruitless as the previous day.

Both John and I have been suffering from a case of the runs for the past week and yesterday I was feeling somewhat drained, in more ways than one. I decided to go for a morning rest but was overcome by the smell of diesel that had been building up in our cabin. I removed the bed covers and inspected the tank to find there had been a leak around the fill pipe. My guess is that filling from the cans had put in more fuel than a fast pump does and the subsequent sloshing around at sea had exposed a small leak. Further investigation revealed about a pint or two of fuel sloshing around under the tank and along the bilge. Thus began the effort to remove the fuel which was no easy thing. I’m glad I packed a packet of nappies/diapers for just such an occasion.

One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog is that I had examined the genset for the cause of the overheating. The impeller looked ok but there was a film of green scum in the water strainer so I’d cleaned that out. Back to day 3, to lower our fuel level a tiny bit I ran the genset for 2 hours. This enabled us to recharge the batteries as we’d not been regenerating in the light winds so far. It also showed that at least the genset could run for 2 hours without triggering the overheating condition. Not feeling too well initially followed by upside down work in the bilge and diesel fumes left me feeling badly off and spent most of the day just resting.

Initially, the winds were promising but they died off to around 5 knots for most of the day. Under the code zero we were making 3 knots in these conditions which was ok.

The only marine life seen throughout the day were a few birds, flying fish and a single somersaulting dolphin sighting early one. We had a few radio communications via net with a nearby group of boats.

In the evening the wind began to pick up. The true wind speed was approaching 10 knots and, as we were flying the code zero at 66 degrees, the apparent wind speed was in the early teens. I set a cautious limit of 16 knots apparent to fall off and bring down the code zero. Really a day 4 story, we were awoken by Helen during her midnight shift as the code zero had again shredded. From what Helen reported it looks like it was left up too long but I suspect a major contributing factor was a weakness from the previous repair. The damage this time was extensive so I doubt it is worth attempting another repair. More $$$$ as I really don’t want to be without a light air sail as our experience earlier in the day proved.

All in all, for me a pretty bad 24 hours. On the upside I did receive a reassuring email about my father which lifted all our spirits.