West Palm Beach to Bermuda 4
21 April 2019 | 29:27N 073:13W
Richard Rowley
Happy Easter everybody
We celebrated with a fried egg, bacon followed by chocolate brownie...
Well the weather has settled down nicely and we are managing some nice sailing and being able to dry the boat and our clothes out a bit, there is even some blue sky behind us trying to catch us up.
I noticed the engine bilge looking a bit full of oily water and assumed I had a fuel leak and checked the tank and thought it was 100lts less than it should have been. Only place I could see that was leaking was the seals around the engine fuel filter. I changed the filter and seals, hopefully tat may have solved, also re-done my maths on fuel usage and only 57ltrs missing, this could be i did not fill it right up and combination of loosing a bit, monitoring the situation. One reason for the bilge being full is that we did take on board a lot of water either through breaking waves or rain water and that would have run down to that bilge. The bilge under the stern gland was full the other day, my fear was that the lip seal had gone, but that, thankfully seams ok, I think the water had come in through the cockpit lockers and drained down to there and the lumber hole from that compartment to the main compartment was blocked, once i cleared that it drained away, I can not be 100% sure it is not leaking, don't want to get too close when it is turning, seems to be dry when it is not turning.
Whilst I was bleeding the engine after changing the fuel filter, I noticed a spark from one of the wires from the loom that runs under the filter from the Starter Motor Relay, the wire continued smouldering once the ignition was off. I removed the insulation tape wrapping and found that one of the wires had its insulation melted through, I managed to replace a section of this wire and all seems good now. I suspect that it was this wire that gave me the starter motor problem when we was back in Dartmouth, the engineer there said that one of the wires has probably lost a bit of its resistance, and he changed the relay from 40amp to 100amp and that sorted the immediate problem, I asked if we should find the dodgy wire and replace it, 'na it will be fine' well it could have a) caused a serious fire, and b) at least failed and caused us to burn out another starter motor and blow up the engine batteries again as well as the battery switch. so quite relieved to have spotted this and dealt with it before it became a problem....even if there was not a serious fuel leak...also found and fixed a minor oil leak. There has been some oil in the bilge for ages, just difficult to get out, but may be all the agitation with the stormy weather and water leaking in stirred things up a bit
After motoring for a while in light winds, we are now sailing at 6-7kts making 070deg with wind just forward of the beam TWS 15kts TWD 200deg, just under genoa and staysail and Old Harry at the helm. I must say that I thought we would struggle without the main, but we seem to be coping quite well. I thought it might be difficult to balance the boat for Old Harry to steer by with out the main but it all seems to work rather well. If we can we might tackle the main sail repair if we get some flat calm, do not want to take the whole sail off if we can avoid it.
It looks like we should have a nice 10-15kts for the next few days to till the end of this particular passage, unfortunately some of it will be coming straight from the NE when we want to go...
We have noticed it certainly getting colder, we have our jumpers, long trousers and thick socks out out, its quite a shock, but today is quite nice.
Fayre Wynds and Kynd Seas
Richard and Alison yacht Cerulean of Penryn
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