Thursday 8 July 2021

By evening, experienced insufficient wind to keep sails, even over-trimmed, from flogging on a roll with boat far off optimal course. Reluctantly cranked iron genny and headed dead downwind to setup for final run-in to Horta from northwest. Wind should veer and fill sufficiently by midnight tomorrow to allow port tack. Meantime exhaust aroma wafts gently through cockpit on zephyr from directly astern. I love the smell of burning diesel in the morning.

Saturday

It did. We did. Sailing by 2100 last night.

Wind now north at twelve to twenty knots. Somewhat variable, but making good time on beam reach. Expect close haul as it continues to veer next two days. ETA Horta Monday morning. We're not an airline so ETA covers any time within an entire day. Probably should be EDA. On long passages through ITCZ could be EWA.

Discovered salt water spraying around engine room at cruise rpm from dripless shaft seal. Perhaps you noticed an anomaly in last sentence. **Notice** Boaters may skip following explanation: Since engine is inside boat and propeller is not, a shaft seal is required to assure two incompatible environments remain separate. This is primarily to protect the boat interior from water, rather than the sea from air. It was traditionally done with a packing gland of compressed, impregnated (no Cal, that's not naughty) flax or, more recently, Teflon. These weep a bit to keep packing cool. Then someone had the idea to mate a slippery disk of high modulus plastic on rotating shaft with disk fixed to hull on a flexible, spring-loaded boot. Voila! No more drips... until it wears out or can't press tightly enough or the boot tears or some other unfortunate occurrence. One of those things has happened. No leaks at lower revs or sailing so will ignore for now and troubleshoot in Azores. As replacement requires haul, not even considering time to acquire new one, hope we can make it work until Turkey.

Sunday 0400

Wind varies from eight knots to twenty two. Since changes happen quickly and anyway we're too lazy to constantly adjust them, sails are set to handle twenty two. Underpowered rest of time at high angle, progress has slowed significantly. May try to do better after sunrise.

As we've proceeded east have advanced clocks for each successive time zone. Bermuda is one hour later than Florida. Azores three hours more. Now in time zone of Greenwich, England, UTC, the place where time begins.

Jack & Jan