Day 18 – Spoke to soon

“Just motor through” – I said about the doldrums yesterday. If only it were that easy. We had a short, glorious few hours’ sailing on Friday morning, but then the wind died. Here’s what it sounds like on Rafiki today.

rrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrr
The diesel engine droning with a slow resonance, you can feel the deep vibrations throughout the boat.

eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn-eeeeennn
Underneath the floorboards the propshaft is whirring and whining away, at a slightly different frequency.

gup-glop, gup-glop, gup-gup-gup-glop, glop, glop, glop-gup, glop-up
Cooling water is spat out of the back of the boat in irregular dollops, as the exhaust chamber fills and then weakly vomits its contents back into the sea, a few degrees warmer.

For hours and hours and hours. I try and ignore the noise, but it’s always there. Starting to make me tetchy- especially as the wind is *almost* strong enough to sail, I’m always thinking “is there enough now? Should we turn the engine off? Is it worth getting the sails out?”

All day we ran the engine, motoring south against a foul northbound current, the sea calm with a large but gentle swell. Having to ride up the swell as well as fight the current means our poor little propeller can only push us along at about than 3 knots, so we’re not making great distance.

It’s cooler below, out of the sun, and I’m sitting in the light breeze under the forward hatch. Every now and then a block clatters on deck, indicating that there might be some wind. I go up topside, but it’s just playing with us. No chance of sailing yet.

Through the night, we chugged on. Clear skies and the usual bonanza of stars. We turned the engine off briefly while we ate supper in the cockpit, as the current pushed us right back up our track. So, dinner done, engine back on.

I spent an hour or so troubleshooting a starting problem at about 1am, testing circuits and flipping switches, trying to think clearly but my mind still half asleep. Also the batteries didn’t look like they were charging in the normal way – strange voltage readings, and unusual behaviour from the voltage regulator. Still not quite sure whether all is OK, but I need the batteries to be a bit low to see if they will charge – right now after days of motoring they are 100% full. The autopilot has been giving us a low voltage alarm on and off over the last week, which I traced to a loose ground connection on one of the batteries … so it may be linked somehow. Nothing serious, we can make it all work, but I’d like to figure out exactly what’s going on.

And again yesterday, no wind. It was hot hot hot, with a clear sky and incredibly blue sea. On the plus side, using the charge from the engine we made nearly 20 gallons of fresh water, and motoring gave at least a tiny breeze to stay cool.

Last night when we turned off the engine for supper, we didn’t drift back up our track so much, so I decided to leave the engine off for the night. We drifted peacefully about on a flat, glassy mirror, where you could even see the clouds reflected in the surface under the light of the half moon. We all got some decent sleep. I was woken this morning by the sound of dolphin cruising along beside us in slow motion; I think they were sleeping too.

Daybreak meant time to transfer another 5 gallons of diesel into the tank, turn on the donkey, and deal with another day under power. It’s now mid afternoon, hot and humid, with grey overcast skies. The current has pretty much gone, fortunately. The breeze is teasing us- 5 to 10 knots directly from where we want to be going, so it doesn’t even make sense to motor-sail.

Onwards… 240 miles to the equator… I was hoping to be there today.