It’s mid morning and we are 75 miles off of the GA coast and about 2/3 of the way toward Ft Pierce, our destination, where I will leave Pandora until Brenda and I return after Christmas to prepare for our run to the Bahamas.
We are motor sailing close hauled and making fairly slow progress which is a bit frustrating. However, our overall run has been pretty good as we sailed at quite a clip for the first 24 hours at the rate of about 200 miles a day. We expect that the winds will again be favorable once we cross into Florida early tomorrow morning and hope to sail the last 100 miles with a good NW wind behind us.
As both Jim and I have already purchased return flights from the BVI, neither one of us is too keen on paying for yet another airline ticket. With that in mind, I’ll be renting a car and we will drive straight through to Jim’s home in Wiliamsburg VA, beginning on Sunday. It’s not ideal but at least it won’t be too expensive. Such are the complexities of moving boats around.
There’s not much to report except that nothing more has broken and I feel like I understand Pandora a lot better.
One thing that I understand now is the refrigeration and if I knew then what I knew then, I would not have aborted my run and would be in the BVI by now. What I learned is that the fridge doesn’t cool well when we are in rough conditions or going fast, as the cooling pump draws in too much aerated water to properly provide cooling for the compressor. This problem could likely be eliminated by putting a new thru-hull in with a forward facing scoop, much like what is used on an engine water intake. In addition, it is commonly known that when water passes over a flush hole in the hull a vacuum is created, known as the venturi effect. As Pandora is such a fast boat, this effect causes the water pump to work much harder, against that vacuum, causing the compressor to overheat. The watermaker suffers a similar problem so I’ll have to replace that thru-hull as well. The Spectra watermaker instructions specifically warn of this problem as a cause of premature pump failure, something that I have already “enjoyed” on Pandora. For now, the simple solution is for me to just turn off the refrigeration and only cycle it as needed and not to allow it to draw down the temperature quite as low, thereby reducing the run time on the unit and minimizing overheating. It’s really unfortunate that I wasn’t aware of this sooner as great deal of frustration and expense could have been avoided.
Oh well, at least I know now.
We haven’t been in close contact with many boats for the last day or so but have talked to a few that have showed up on AIS. In particular, I was amused by a 70′ sport fisherman called “18 reeler”. The captain had a thick southern accent and I couldn’t help wondering if he made his money in the trucking business. Oh yeah, we have also had plenty of dolphins keeping us company, which is always fun.
I guess that’s about all for now as we make our way south. Oh yeah, we are officially into warm water so it’s shorts and light shirts, even at night.