SHTP Stories - July 2

Nice weather again - the sun is out with scattered clouds. I can't take the jib anymore. I shake out the reef and I put up the blast reacher. The breeze is up but the boat picks up a knot with that sail change. We are now straight on a reach but there is too much wind to power reach under spinnaker and the sets and takedowns of the previous day were way too tiring for me to want to try that again...

I crawl below to grab the satellite phone and I call Brian. I wanted to have a way to fix Doomsday. I don't have a spare brain and it is my favorite autopilot. Without Doomsday I assume that I can't use the X5 wand, so that leave one single point of failure with the hydraulic ram and I have only the ST 2,000 for light air should NKE fail. ST 2,000 is also a lot less high tech than NKE and won't drive the boat as well. Darn. Bad luck. This is only day 3 and I was hoping to ask a lot of the autopilot. Also NKE uses more power and power is something I am having a problem with. Double darn.

I get Brian on the phone and tell him about the solar panels. He said that during his Transpac he wired them straight to the batteries and never had a problem with charge control as there was way too much demand on the batteries. None of my batteries are anywhere near full so I guess that I wouldn't have the same problem.
Brian says that there is a fuse but it is internal to the box - we will not open it. He doesn't tell me at the time but NKE is going through that same box and if I were to disconnect it by mistake, wouldn't make my situation any better. So I will have to do without Doomsday.

I have been monitoring power and it looks like Mr Fusion is doing an impressive job - it doesn't allow me to use the AP for too long and when I am up I must mostly drive - however, it allows me to sleep just fine. I have been getting about 5 hours of sleep a day. Strangely, after that, I don't feel like sleeping again. Mostly in the early hours of the morning. Since I don't have solar panel it doesn't really matter when I take a break. Everything is still too wet to do anything on deck. It looks like the little charge controller light isn't on.

The ride is a little less wet although there are still some waves breaking against the deck and splashing me. I have decided that I will follow the water temperature since I am not using the wind speed indicators. 54 degrees. We are nowhere near Hawaii, that's for sure.

I try the kite again toward the end of the morning but the breeze picks up again and I am back to the blast reacher. Every sail change is a lot of effort. I probably can't race that hard for too long and may have to wait for a bit longer for things to settle before going forward and making big changes. I am doing 8.5 knots now, still on a reach.

Now that the kite has been up a few times, my spirits are up and I feel really upbeat. I really needed a spinnaker in my life. Also, the weather is warming up a little bit even though it is getting cloudy which I welcome as my burned hands are not doing too good.

Over the next couple of days, the wind will abate, clouds will fill up the sky and the Pacific will live up to its name (Magellan gave the ocean its name when becalmed after crossing the Magellan Straits and en route to the Philippines)

The only 'race' thing I am doing though is to check position relative to the finish line, and general course towards it. Pretty brain dead navigation and tactics. I am still brooding most of the day. I assume that the wind will move aft tomorrow and that I'll be able to settle into the kite/twin sail routine I had planned.

I call Nathan in the afternoon. Feels good to hear a friendly voice.