Tuesday 14th August

At sea

17 03.170 S
152 45.982 W (at Midnight)

At break of day we were beginning to make our departure preparations. We ran the generator and made some water, took the last of our trash ashore, made a couple of last minute phone calls and tied down all the stuff that moves when we are underway. By 10.00hrs we were ready to leave and went to turn off the generator and start up the engine; it didn’t quite get to that point though as Gerry found that the generator was hot to touch when it shouldn’t have been. We weren’t going to start our trip with a problem and so Gerry took the casing off of the generator and began to investigate why it was hot to touch; it turned out that the blower which cools the set wasn’t working, this meant further investigation. The minor tool kit came out and Gerry began to delve into the depths of the generator – he is quite used to this by now and after several prods and pokes, a few foul words and much testing of various wires he finally discovered that the earth lead was disconnected. Once the problem was discovered it was very quick to fix and we were soon packing away the tool kit and replacing the casing, we breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t a major problem, we have just about had enough of this generator and the next thing that goes wrong with it will probably see the whole thing being consigned to the deep! Anyway it got to 11.15hrs before we finally dropped the mooring ball and motored out of the bay. Once we had cleared the reef line we turned into wind and hoisted the main sail, once back on course the wind was blowing 15 knots on our beam – great for sailing so we unfurled the jib and began our passage in a pleasant way. Abigail wanted fresh fish so we threw the line in the water – ever hopeful! We had some fresh baguettes which we made into salad rolls for lunch and settled in for a reasonable afternoon of sailing. As the afternoon wore on the swell came around on the beam and made the motion a little uncomfortable as we rolled a fair bit. We hadn’t caught a fish by 17.00hrs so we packed the line away for the night. We tried to get into the computer to type up blog notes but found that we couldn’t open the thing as there was a sticky key and our password to open the computer contains the key that was sticky – just another thing to fix! It makes it even worse to know that all our photos and Abigail’s photos are stored on that computer we just have to hope that it is an easily fixed problem. I was going to have to use the older slower computer to do the blog at a later stage. An early dinner (one of the pre made meals) was followed by the start of the night watches. Gerry and Abigail stayed up together for most of the first watch, Abigail going to bed an hour before Gerry and I swapped out. Most of the night continued in the same way as the afternoon had – we were moving along quite well but it wasn’t the most comfortable ride.