Daily Log for the Minnow

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Last Thursday or Friday we ran the Iridium satphone out of minutes. We thought when we used up our bulk minutes, we'd go to more
expensive minutes, so we were in no rush to re-up the bulk minutes. However, when we ran out of our bulk minutes we couldn't make
any more phone calls. Oops.

Cathy eventually called us. We asked her to buy some more minutes, but the place was closed until Monday. So we've been using the
technology of the ancient seafaring vikings, with weather faxes and voice HF communication. And Cathy's been calling with the
weather reports. She's not quite as ancient as the vikings.

The tropical storm has fizzled a bit, and is 200-300 miles to our northwest. The water was pretty rough yesterday and this morning,
but we still averaged 9 or 10 knots. We guessed the waves were over 12 ft. today. This boat handles really good in that kind of
stuff.

Today I woke up early, as usual, about 10:30 or so. Serge had planted a cooking timer behind my back. A fishing pole holder was
loose, and I tightened it. Then the hydraulic winches stopped working. But we have winch handles. Then the autopilot quit. But we
got it working by turning off some stuff on the seatalk network.

When messing with the autopilot, we noticed that the rudder was being used more than normal. And our speed seemed a bit slower than
it should be.

Then David took a shower and noticed that the boat was lower in the water than normal. At least on that side. This is not good in a
boat, particularly if the boat is hundreds of miles out in the ocean. He checked the forward watertight locker. It had about 5 feet
of water in it, maybe a couple of tons. Someone didn't close the hatch well, and water had been splashing in for a day or two of the
rough weather. Then David got really loud.

We spent a couple of hours going east, with the wind, away from our destination, pumping, bailing, and otherwise evacuating the
water from the hold. There's still some there, but we quit when it got dark. The majority of the water is out now. Now the autopilot
doesn't use the rudder as much as it was earlier today. The speed is still slow, but that's because the wind is slower and from a
bad direction -- mostly in front of is.

Now we have only a few boat problems:

1. A little water in the forward hold.
2. Wet stuff that was in the forward hold, such as suitcases and toilet paper.
3. A spare watermaker and windmill that is still underwater in the forward hold. They need rinsing in fresh water, drying, and
hopefully that's all.
4. Flaky hydraulic winches. We have to use winch handles! This was "fixed" before we left France.
5. Fishing line is tangled on the rudder or prop. It shouldn't be too bad because we haven't been motoring.
6. The main halyard is chafing where it goes through the deck. It's worn through the cover. We need to make the hole bigger.
7. We have some failure in an instrument or connection on the seatalk network, so now either the autopilot or true wind speed and
direction display work, but not both.
8. Three or four of our live vests auto-inflated today during the thrashing. Oops. We have recharge kits for most of them, and
spares.
9. We're missing some setscrews on one of the furlers of the foresails. We have to be careful about that.
10. A saltwater leak, maybe coming through a window in the living area.
11. Some wooden trim around the freezer fell off 3 times.

The baritone and sousaphones are still in fine shape, as are the stereo/dvd player, so we're in excellent condition overall. Except
Mike is a litte chubby.

Today we got into 4th position in the catamaran division, and 26th overall. We gave back about 25 miles this afternoon when we were
thrashing about. We haven't run our motors, and we got behind when there wasn't much wind for a couple of days. Once I even went
swimming and could keep up with the boat.

Fish caught so far:

Nov 21: 2 dolphin, big one 19 lb
Nov 22: zip
Nov 23: tuna and little dolphin
Nov 24: 2 dolphin
Nov 25: 3 dolphin, one at 11 knots.
Nov 26: 3 dolphin
Nov 27: One flying fish. It flew to my feet when I was messing with the sails a few minutes go. I sent him on his way.

It's tough to reel in a fish when you're moving 8-12 knots! We lost several. I'm surprised they'd bite anything going that fast.

The water temperature is 86°F. That's warm! Maybe even warm enough for a tropical storm, huh? I'm the only one up at the moment
(2:15 am). We are at 22°19'N, 31°53'W, headed west at 7.5 knots. Wind is out of the west southwest at around 15 knots.