Hello Boys & Girls, it's your old buddy Banzai Bozo here... we've got a beautiful day at the top end of the South China Sea, and lots of Bozos to play with...

Weather went from good to great overnight. The clouds cleared sometime after sunset and we had stars; the bit of wind gradually died off and this morning we have:

Beaufort Force 0-1 glass with a little SE swell, clear skies overhead with haze. Overnight small dip in barometer is now up to 1008.2 Position: 22deg 04.191'N, 116deg 49.293'E, COG 093, (Heading is 097 so we are already picking up some N-bound current, and compensating for it), speed 6.7 kts, should clear the south tip of Taiwan in about 36 hrs. Hong Kong Observatory still reporting Force 4-5 E in the Bashi Channel. (where we will pass between the south point of Taiwan and the north end of Luzon PI); similar in Taiwan Strait.

All crew and equipment are operating well. A couple of issues:

we have a strong smell in the engine room; can't decide whether it's coming off the thermal insulation wrap we put on the engine exhaust before leaving Aberdeen, or something else?

after running for a couple of hours yesterday, I opened the valves on the Gulf Coast oil by-pass filter, over a couple of hours the oil pressure dropped from around 50 to the low 30s. Shut down the filter and it took about 6 hours to get up to the low 40s. When we get into Japan, I can check and see if the by pass is bringing the oil volume down, thereby dropping the pressure, but we'd prefer not to shut the engine down in the middle of a passage.

the BalMar alternator on the engine, which charges the house batteries, reached it's "float" voltage and dropped down to just coasting, putting out less amperage than we're using with on-board systems, mainly the electronics. It stayed shut down for 6-8 hours, then kicked into a stage where it charges a bit, then backs off, then charges a bit again. The Heart panel shows about 500 amp hr deficit from the last couple days before leaving, where we had the house batts down to 12.10 and didn't completely re-charge with the genset. I'm not sure if it's a real deficit or just numbers on the panel. The voltage, even during the "float" is staying up at 12.85-90. There are some things I can do to get more charge into the house batts, but for now, I'm just watching to see what the BalMar regulator does.

Berry: do I need to shut down the boat electronics before switching them to the start battery power source you installed?

Water a beautiful cobalt blue here with flying fish skimming across the surface, but unfortunately we also see a lot of trash.

Victoria, could you please send us Dr Phil's email address, it didn't get onto the group list. Could you please forward to him until we can adjust the group list in Japan?

Kate, could you please go into our AOL email and get Erne Ballinger's, Bill Henson's, Bob Rubin's email address and Tony Matthews and send these to us at the gmn-usa address. If you forward to them for the next couple days, we will use the info you send us to update the group list when we get to Japan and back onto the Internet.

Jane-Jane Chou, can you forward our messages please to Bob and Margaret Jack, again until we can get to the internet in Japan and update our group list.

Don & Margie, sorry, didn't get you onto the group list either, but will rectify later. Jane, could you please forward yesterday's message #1 to Don & Margie.

Feel free to forward our underway messages to whomever you think would be interested. Also, send to us additional email addresses for those who you wish to see added to the group list when we have the capability.

Until tomorrow everyone... Dave (Mike), Dorothy, Jim, Craig, Kirk, Justin and Rusty

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