agility @ sea

Today brought a little more action than day 3. We have 2230 nm to go after motoring for the last 24 hours. The currents are swirling so sometimes it helps and sometimes it hurts. I downloaded three difference current maps but they are all inconsistant and there is not a clear gulfstream current like in Florida. As a result, we’re just sailing best course to get into the winds tomorrow and for the rest of the voyage.

We had a ship broadcasting their tunes on the VHF which annoys me greatly but that only lasted about 5 minutes before I turned off the radio. We had another couple of sailboats call one another but they didn’t give coordinates so we are not sure how close we are to them. Maybe we’ll see them on the AIS in the next day or two. Other that that we are all alone.

The big activity today was changing the saildrive oil. This is a bit of a pain to do while on the water and underway since it requires a special tool that I don’t have. The engine started making an every so slight noise last night when I went to bed so I ran the other engine and slept. When I checked the oil in the morning the engine was fine but the transmission fluid for the saildrive was the color of chocolate milk which I think means some sea water contaminated the fluid. Anyway, we siphoned all the transmission fluid, rinsed the transmission works several times with clean oil and then filled it up with new oil. We don’t plan to use the engine except to dock or in case of emergency so nothing to worry about but it was a 3 hour task and a messy one since we didn’t have the proper fitting to catch the oil on the way out.

Thanks to my lovely grease monkey the bilge is just as clean as it’s ever been.

If anyone has any questions, I’ll try to answer them in future posts.