Hi Everyone,
Well yesterday was a day that made another chapter for our book (as Jan K. puts it)! In fact, it was an excellent day, as in the end, everything turned out well.
The morning started, during my morning inspection, with me finding a bolt lying in the scuppers. Then the hunt began to find where it had come from. In the end it turned out to be from the furler of the staysail (same problem that we had going to New Caledonia, where the bolts from the headsail furler ended up in the Pacific!). How it did not roll off this bucking deck or go down one of the deck drains, I do not know. Anyway, Dimitri and John went forward – strapped on of course- and refitted it and tightened all the other bolts, which were also working their way loose. It was quite a feat for John seeing as he has been feeling seasick for the last two days. So... that turned out really well seeing as we do not have any spares (hope they have some in Mauritius).
We had drained the bilge the day before yesterday as we could hear the bilge pump working intermittently (which it does not usually do) and had noticed that there was quite a bit of water in it. We put it down to the spray coming over the front and getting into the anchor locker and also some rainwater getting down the mast. Yesterday we could hear the bilge pump working again so had a look into the bilge again. It was again full of water! We have a small 12V electric bilge pump that Dimitri rigged up just before we left Sydney so we used it to completely empty the water. To our surprise, the bilge didn’t empty and we discovered that water was pouring in through one of the pipes. We traced the pipe back and found that it was coming from the locker where the prop shaft gland is and to our horror found water pouring in between the gland and the prop shaft. We tried tightening all bolts etc. to try to stop the flow of water, to no avail. In the end, we wrapped Glad Wrap around it (Dimitri had been told by someone that it works) and it slowed but did not stop the flow. We got onto the Sat Phone to Alex who managed to speak to the service department at Island Packet Yachts, and to our pleasure, the fix turned out to be relatively easy (for once in our lives, when we needed things to go right, as usually small jobs turn out to be much more difficult than anticipated, not the other way around). We had anticipated having to slip the boat on the other end to fix it as the prop shaft has to come off to replace the gland. So.. the leak has been stopped which means we will not have to bail the bilge every hour for the next 10 days! In the end, it turned out to be a pretty good day! Alex, thank you so much for all your help!
We are now pretty much exactly half way across the Indian Ocean. Over the last 24 hours we have not seen any shipping – I guess the ships we were seeing earlier were on a direct route between South African and Singapore/China. We are having perfect sailing conditions 24 kn. wind and we are moving at around 8 kn. The swell is still quite large – around 3.5 – 4m. so it is a roller coaster ride at a 45 degree angle and everything we do becomes a challenge. Try cooking on a bucking horse sometime!
Hopefully today will be uneventful as we prefer no news rather than too much excitement!
Hugs and Kisses
Arti and Dimitri.
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