Energy issues: Little tasks, Big work on a moving boat
18 February 2018 | 950 miles west of Valdivia
Alan
pos about 41S and 94W. Valdivia in 950 miles.
Windpilot works.... kind of.... I think the drogue must have pulled on it at some point and bent a piece of cast aluminum the size of my arm!!. Result is the finely tuned machine is acting in a quite jerky way; but it's doing its job now in W winds although our course is not quite a geodesic (shortest path between 2 pts ). This morning we also finished bolting back the hydro gen; Janneke squeezed in what Nathaniel calls the devil's scrotum (under the cockpit all the way aft) and me on the scoop half way submerged art each passing wave. The hydro generator has several parts broken and I don't think I can get a charge out of it. We turned off the fridge (only thing fresh in it now is beer) and try to make the windpilot work as long as possible to minimize the time we must make the engine run. We had to run the engine this am because we had been on Autopilot until I fixed it this morning. I tweaked the charging parameters of the engine's regulator and the stupid alternator is now doing a better job at charging than before. We're under main 1 reef and jib in much better seas and 18kts of wind so this is PEACEFUL for a change.... except when the windpilot goes on a klunk and gets off the freeway for a stop at the local whisky bar.....