Year 8 Day 59 On Again, Off Again
23 August 2015 | False Bay Yacht Club, Simon's Town, South Africa
Dave/Overcast With Some Wind
It was a very strange day. The various weather forecasts were, once again, all over the place with some saying sunny skies while others were saying periods of rain in the morning and again in the afternoon. All of them showed light to moderate winds.
Reality was closer to the latter forecast as we never really saw any sun. However, the only rain we had were a few scattered drops in the morning. On two occasions I brought out the bosons chair in hopes of going up the mast. Unfortunately, each time I was getting ready, some gusts of wind blew up and the skies in the direction that the wind was coming from started to look ugly. Thus, I chickened out each time. My lack of courage paid off the second time as the wind hit with vengeance, blowing up to 38 knots as the sun was setting. Being on a thin little seat, hanging from a line at the top of the mast, 70 feet above water, just is not a place you want to be with heavy winds blowing. I was happy that I did not go up.
Instead, I worked on the protected stern cockpit prepping the wind generator for tomorrow. I am hoping to put it back together then using one of the techniques the manufacture has suggested. It is a real pain to get the rotor perfectly set so the heavy magnets are centered within the stator such that they do not bind together. The heavy magnets want to pull themselves over to the metal walls of the stator which is not good. That is what prevents the rotor from turning.
I also filled the 7 5-gallon diesel jerry cans I used yesterday to fill the deck fuel bladder and then covered and tied down each of the jerry cans to the deck. We now have 85 gallons of diesel on the deck. Along with the 168 gallons in our tanks, we now have enough for about 2000 nm of motoring under low rpms. I don’t envision needing that much since we should be riding the trades most of the time but we will also be running the generator some to keep the batteries happy. It is much better to have too much fuel during a passage than not enough. Our longest passage will be from Ascension Island to Tobago, which is about 3,000 nm. If we do not stop at Ascension Island but go directly from St. Helena, the distance lengthens to about 3,700 nm.