24hr run: 1146-1087=59nm!!! Another ppffff!! But who cares, it about the journey, mon!
Captain’s log, star date Sept 30
Time: Comments
04:35 Jibed at 3am to pass to the South of the Capricorn Seamount. One hell of a seamount. Goes 4 miles straight up from the ocean floor but doesn’t make it to the surface (1300ft down).
Altered course to 210 COG to leave the seamount to stbd. There a reef to the NW of it and I don’t want to get anywhere close to that
Started engine at 927.7 hrs because batteries down. Alternator continues to overheat so reg cuts it back and charging is not efficient. On top of which the alarm sounds when that happens so I have to go to the dash and cancel it manually.
Anyway the whole thing is not working properly: I’m charging at most at 50A at 1200rpm (+about 8 amps of instruments, AP and lights, so alt is putting out about 8 A. When cut off by reg it puts out about 28A (20A plus draw).
On slow overcast days (no wind no solar no hydro) the engine is the only source of charging so it must be working better.
10:45 Did a periodic check of the engine compartment and noticed a lot of belt dust. I thought this might be related to the alternator overheating, so I put a new belt on, which of course took a good while. The outside of the belt still looked good, but the grooves on the inside were in bad shape so it’s good that I changed it. Let the engine run for a while and all the instruments telling me about the battery state of charge disagree: the new “smartcharge” I put in in Raiatea (doesn’t hurt them that they call it smartcharge) tells me 76%, the old untrustworthy ”Link10” (link to what god only knows) tells me 90% and the alternator regulator (another “smart” one – same manufacturer as the “smartcharge”) puts the charging in float mode which means the batteries are about 85% charged. Now this all makes a difference because batteries cannot be run down less than about 60%, and charging them at 100% takes for ever. SO you pretty much have energy available between 60% and 85% which is about 25% of the total battery capacity. So an inaccuracy of 14% in the state of charge means about half of the energy available. That’s why it bothers me. And it’s so fucking arcane and intellectually worthless that I’ve taken to re-reading Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet. Not totally sure, which is more tiresome though! (kidding!....maybe…)
11:00 We’re about 100 nm from Vava’u. Going around the seamount but no cracken yet. The shape of this thing seen underwater should give any stupid “Spirit of Warcraft” (or whatever the hell the name is) -type video game sceneries a run for their money. This thing must look like the Everest under water, except steeper?
12:00 I ran the engine 4 hrs and got altogether about 70AH in but that’s not really true because 70AH is what I know I put in. But what the batteries actually gets is less because there are losses (heat etc…). So I’ll just go back to Eugenie Grandet (you just want to lob a bomb in that damn situation to make the women wake up and revolt; jeez!!! I’ll re-read George Sand and see if she was any fucking better. I hate awful situations that could be remedied but aren’t because of social pressures and subservient people. In Syria they cannot do a damn thing about their plight, Eugenie Grandet and her dim witted mother could, for fucksake. I will finish the book though, it will make more cultivated, just like a g.d. turnip!
Another slow 24 hr run. But it’s grand weather and totally mellow. And I shouldn’t get there until Monday, anyway, if I don’t want to pay that overtime weekend fee. I could go and put up the reacher or even the A2 but I got to eat my spag Bolognese from scratch. I thought I was taking out ground beef but it was beef for stew…different cooking times …. And I’m famished. So reacher wait. Me stuff my face first.
Oh and the reef. Now I’ve been amazed at the Capricorn Seamount but the reef is really really weird. It comes out of the western side of the seamount, and I mean straight out, and doesn’t correspond at all to the ocean floor contour lines of the seamount which are gently sloping down on its western edge. And it shows the reef (if it is a reef ) as pretty large (5nm diam), pretty much circular and awash!!! Awash !!!!!! And it was “reported” in 1969! What the hell it is I don’t know. A new volcano that made it to the surface but just? Anyways, I’ll give it a wide berth.