We have been at this a week. In less than six hours we will be a third of the way to Honolulu. Our day's run was 135 miles, the best yet! We have 1831 miles to go.
The apparent wind is now abaft the beam. Even though the winds are weaker, we are able to keep up our speed because of the favorable angle.
Now for a change of pace. Many of you out there in the great NS Blog reading public are probably wondering, "What does Alan do all day long? After all, he has three other people to help sail the boat and he doesn't even stand watch. When will he succumb to boredom?" I want you all to know that I very much appreciate your concern and for that reason I have decided to describe my morning.
I arose a few minutes before 7am, at watch-change time. Gay had just completed the "dog" watch and was being replaced on deck by Pete, whose turn it was to do the "morning" watch. Amy was still asleep.
During the night, the charge in the battery bank had fallen to 53% of capacity. 50% is the lowest you can take deep-discharge batteries such as those found on NS and most other cruising boats, without damaging them. The solar panels alone would not suffice to raise the charge level so that it would remain at safe levels for more than a few hours.
I would need to run the engine so that its alternator output could be added to the output of the panels. But first, I filled a half-gallon bottle with water and poured it into the engine's cooling system, which has been losing water. As long as I pour in this water every time I run it, the engine does not seem to over-heat. After checking that there was also sufficient diesel oil in the fuel tank, I started the engine and then checked the electronic charge monitoring system to ascertain that the battery was indeed being charged at a goodly rate.
In the night, Pete had noticed that one of the control lines for the Monitor self-steering was chafing where it ran through a block on the Monitor itself. In daylight, it was clear that something would have to be done. I took some wrenches from my tool bag, donned my harness, tethered myself to a strong point and leaned out over the stern of the boat so that I could reach the block. After several tries, I repositioned the block so that now the line leads fair.
Since I was on deck, Gay asked me to help him shake a reef out of the mainsail. That only took a couple of minutes.
After that, I got our Spectra 150 MPC watermaker going. When the 150 MPC starts up, it automatically tests the salinity of the water it is producing and starts flowing it to the tanks when the salinity is at an acceptable level. I don't trust this, because if the automatic test malfunctions, bad water will be added to the good water already in the tank, possibly making the entire tank undrinkable. Instead, I diverted the product water to a small tap at the sink and tested its salinity with a manual probe. After I satisfied myself that the salinity was in the safe range and that the smell and taste of the water were acceptable, I diverted the flow to a tank.
Since I had not attended to our "black water" holding tank for a week, I added a gallon of freshwater and a packet of Odorlos biological treatment powder to the toilet and flushed it all into the holding tank. That should eliminate smells for another week.
The high frequency radio communications which provide us with personal email, and with weather reports and data, works best within a couple of hours after sunrise or before sunset, due to the nature of the propagation of radio waves in the upper atmosphere. Since the end of the morning "window" was fast approaching, I first connected to the nonprofit sailmail system to send and receive personal email and a textual weather report, then to the amateur radio winlink system to download a weather data (grib) file. This only took about 20 minutes.
After that I noticed that the alternator was no longer charging at the rate that I would have expected. Initially the battery bank had been at 53%. It was now a little over 60%, but the mode of charge had changed from bulk (fast) to float (very slow). Why, when there was still so much to do? I found the manual for our Balmar Max Charge MIC-614 alternator regulator, which told me that the length of time that the regulator is willing to drive the alternator in bulk mode is determined by a factor called "field threshhold-bulk to absorption" (fba) which is given a default value at the factory but can be changed by the owner in a process called "advanced programming". The manual does not explain what this fba means or why it is even necessary (the MIC-614 is a "smart" regulator, after all). I "programmed" the MIC-614 to reduce fba, stopped and restarted the engine, and the system was back to charging in bulk mode.
Amy had been up for a while, so I asked her and Gay if they would like some scrambled eggs. They were in favor of this idea, so I cooked up onions and medium-hot green peppers with eggs. The aroma awakened Pete, so we were all able to eat breakfast at the same time at NS's gimballed saloon table.
While eating, it occurred to me that there might be some grated cheddar in the fridge. I went to our top-opening freezer/fridge, opened the fridge door and searched the interior. Finding nothing, I was just withdrawing my head from the area when the door swung down, giving me a small cut in the forehead and the beginnings of a "goose egg". Why was I so careless? No excuse, but we had been heeled over 15 to 20 degrees on the starboard tack for a week, and it had not been necessary to be as diligent as usual in securing that fridge door with shock cord. Now that the wind is abaft the beam we are heeling much less. I hope I have learned a lesson from this.
Anyway, I got a paper towel for the blood and an ice pack for the goose egg and rested on the settee while Amy washed the dishes. The wound was not serious at all. I did not need a band-aid and the ice made the swelling disappear.
Before noon, I needed to start and stop the engine two more times in order to reset the Balmar MIC-614. Something is not right there!
At 1800 UTC, June 10, 2012, we are at 23 24.633 N, 125 03.327 W
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