We received an email from a blog reader friend of ours. He is French but works and lives with his family in Singapore. His name is Pascal and we really enjoyed getting to meet and know him when we were in Singapore two years ago. He shared with us that he had just completed his transatlantic crossing, going from France to Tortola, BVI. He had hoped that we could have met up in BVI. However, as you know, we are now heading for the south end of the Antilles instead of the north end, where BVI is located.

Anyway, he shared with us that the sailing was great but they had all kind of electrical and electronic issues. One of the problems we can relate to since we are having a similar problem. He wrote: "To add to our misery, we had little trouble with one of the compasses when we were starting our starboard engine like it would get confused and throw our heading off by 20-30 degrees. So our internal procedure was to turn off the pilot before starting the engine, start, then monitor until the compass recovered: fun especially before we could diagnose this as before we could not comprehend, we were losing the wind totally, thinking initially that the wind might have shifted, then we would adjust heading on pilot accordingly, to again lose it the other way around when the compass recovers ;-)"

This is almost the exact problem we are having. Except in our case, the auto pilot sometimes goes wacko when we start the generator to charge the batteries. When this happens, we have to hand steer until it settles down. I need to ask him if the boat, which was a Lagoon 38, used the Raymarine auto pilot and chart plotter system.

This issue had stopped occurring for the last few weeks and we had hoped it was behind us. However, it started up again last night. Mary had just replaced me at the helm and the batteries were down to 12.3 volts. Thus, it was time to start the generator and restore the voltage level in the house batteries.

As soon as I had the generator running I heard Mary call for me. When I reached the helm Otto was taking Leu Cat further and further toward the east and into the wind. In no time we were in irons and we had to fire up the engines to turn the boat around and restore our course. I sat up with Mary waiting for Otto to settle down until 2245. By then he was doing much better and Mary had firm control of the situation.

This morning, when I came up to relieve Mary Margaret, at 0600, it was time to fire up the generator again to recharge the batteries. This time Otto behaved himself. Whew! Never a dull moment on this passage!

When the sun was fully up I was able to inspect the boat and in the process I discovered our next issue. The starboard lazy jack had broken and was dangling from the mast. The lazy jack is a series of lines that are connected and they hold up the bag that the mainsail falls into when we drop the main. They also help guide the sail into the bag.

Losing a lazy jack line is not the end of the world but it is something that we will need to fix before we get into heavy weather. I do not want to reef the main with a dangling line that has a small block on its end, swinging around. As I watched it, it would sometimes swing under a batten car. I am concerned that if we get into a storm and need to throw in another reef or two that a batten car with get jammed on the lazy jack block. What a revolting development that would be!

I had suggested that when the seas and winds calm down that Mary Margaret haul me up the mast about 20 feet do I can install a replacement line. However, she nixed that idea after seeing me hang on for dear life the last time I went up the mast in the open ocean. Instead, she suggested that we wait until we reach Fernando de Noronha, which is the island off the coast of Brazil that we have been heading toward. It was our intent to use this as a place where we could refuel if we had to motor a lot due to light winds. Since we have barely run the engines, we were hoping to just sail by it as we turned to head up the South American coast.

Mary Margaret's thinking is that we are not supposed to have any heavy weather until well north of that island so we should just continue on with one reef in the main until we reach that island. Once there, we briefly anchor in the quite waters off the leeward side of the island, make the line repair, and then continue on. We would only lose ½ or less of a day doing this. We could also decide if we wanted to run in to get fuel, assuming that the officials would let us do so. We are supposed to have Brazilin visas to stop there and we do not. We have been told that we can claim an emergency and be allowed to stay up to 72 hours if we pay mucho dinero.

We have decided to follow Mary Margaret's suggestion, especially since I am not overly anxious to go up the mast, even just 20 feet, in the rolly seas we have been having. We are still 500 nm away and hope to make it in 4 days.

As of noon today, the end of Day 5, our position is 4 59.2"S: 24 14.3W. Our course is 254 degrees True due to a shift in the winds; our speed is 4.7 knots with only 9.5 knots of apparent wind from the E. The swells are a bit bumpy with cross swells coming from the E and the SE, each under 2 meters.

We made just 125 nm this last day due to light winds that started in the night and will continue for a day or two. Our average speed for the day was 5.2 knots and our average speed for the passage has been 5.25 knots. We have sailed 630 nm since leaving Ascension Island.