In contrast to the nearly three hours, between midnight and 03:00 that I spent swapping out the dead alternator yesterday, the last 24 hours have been decidedly uneventful.
My crew Steve and Peter have settled into the rhythm of passage making and I am happy to say that not a lot has happened.
Brenda likes to say that when we are cruising that “nothing happens aboard Pandora until noon”, typifying the relaxed approach to getting stuff done aboard.
One basic truth is that even the simplest task takes a lot of time when you are on a boat. Whether it is meal prep, general cleaning or fixing broken stuff, somehow the next day rolls around with a lot of sameness.
Swapping out the alternator only meant taking off a handful of bolts but getting to them was anything but simple and required a good amount of sweat reaching around a hot engine and it took a long time. Time that I should have been sleeping.
When I got up this morning, I noticed that I had a few more bruises likely related to my midnight contortions.
Sadly, decent wind continues to allude us but we are hopeful that it will begin to fill in later today.
As we loaf along, waiting for wind to fill in, engine rumbling away, Steve challenged us to a game of hearts. I have never played and the rules seemed a bit daunting to me. Fortunately, a brief rise in wind called the game off after a few rounds…
As I have mentioned in past posts, strong north winds are common off the west coast of Portugal and while the wind to date has been frustratingly light so far, we should have more than enough wind to move us along smartly for at least the last several hundred miles.
Even when there has been wind, it has either been too light or from behind us so that we have been unable to keep up a decent speed. As a result, we have motored a lot and today I decided to transfer some of the fuel I have in jugs to the port tank. We have plenty of fuel and transferring from can to tank is yet another SLOW activity aboard Pandora.
We are facing a deadline late on Wednesday evening to finish our transit of Gibraltar before strong easterly winds will begin blowing from the east. While I prefer more leisurely sailing we will need to make up speed as we have not covered enough distance each day to ensure that we pass Gibraltar before adverse winds make progress impossible.
As I write this we are about 300 miles into our 1,000 mile run and it will be a nailbiter hoping that we get through Gibraltar before the wind turns against us.
Perhaps I will close with a lovely sunrise photo, just in case you might have missed the countless sunrise photos I have already posted this season.
I guess that is about it for now, a post that is nearly as interesting as our day has been.
So far, a good day and not a lot happened aboard Pandora, so far…
Now all we need is better wind.