Tuesday 05 Jul 2011

Tuesday 05 Jul 2011
0600 PDT Position: 33 12 N, 119 08 W

At some point we decided to follow the fleet North towards San Nicolas Island. By morning we had very light winds, with swells building to over 4 feet, and overcast skies past 10:00 AM. The daily position reports showed us in 6th place.

The water maker was not yet working and the generator would only run for a few minutes before shutting down. Curt used an identical water maker while cruising in Mexico and was confident that he would get it working soon. Several of us were kind of nervous since we didn’t have enough water in our tanks to last the entire trip without the watermaker. We decided to run the diesel engine in neutral for a few hours to change the batteries until we could diagnose and repair the generator.

The light winds continued through the afternoon with the boat traveling at 4-6 knots. Randy, Phil, and I had the 1:00-4:00 PM shift. We tacked off of San Nicholas Island and headed West again towards the rhumb line. We all had taken sea sickness medication and nobody exhibited any symptoms of sea sickness.

We had a very difficult night with light and variable winds. We tacked numerous times trying to make progress towards the trade winds. The light and variable winds were rough on the well worn and heavily patched No. 1 Genoa. The sail shredded and was patched the week before the race. The sailmaker gave it a 50/50 chance of lasting us for the 2-4 days it would take to reach the trades.

Our navigation lights developed a short and would not remain lit. During his pre-race inspection, Tom noticed some poorly taped wires off the bow pulpit and kicked himself for not suggesting that we make a proper repair before we left the docks. He taped some battery powered lights to the bow and stern pulpits.

Randy made a tasty dinner of Beef Stroganoff which everyone thoroughly enjoyed.