Sunrise
The night and the morning had the winds die down and the water settle as well. But this is deceptive as that means that Zanshin, on occasion, will lie sideways to the almost imperceptible deep ocean swell. Then a harmonic progression starts and soon the boat is rolling around heavily, and 10 seconds later it is as calm as being land. Yet at least the sun is shining, it is 30C outside and the water is 27C – paradise!
Morning
I did some work on the computer in the morning to catch up for the missing day on Friday. Soon it will become unbearably hot belowdecks and I’ll switch to working up top for the rest of the day. Until then I’ve got the fans running to provide at least a bit of ventilation.
After I wrote the above, some clouds have moved over St. Martin and it has cooled somewhat, and the solar output has gone way down. But I still think that with all the panels I’ve got now, the battery bank should fill up. I’ve also temporarily installed an Orion 24V-12V charger that will charge my small 12V house bank; that small bank gets drained rather quickly and only gets charged when I run the engine. It is used for miscellaneous 12V devices such as the cigarette plugs, the AIS transmitter and the stereo.
Midday heat
I’ve put the cylinder block back together and am awaiting the valve seals and gasket kit so that I can put the engine back together and test to see if it will run again. It is warm aboard, and I am having trouble getting the energy to clean up or do any of the many tasks that have accumulated.
I think I’ll go prepare the forward head for Phil, who has asked if he can join me for the trip to Antigua. I’d installed a brand-new faucet last season, and it looks pretty rusty; I’m hoping that some cleaning and judicious use of cleaning compound might make it presentable again.
It is now almost 17:00 and it is still hot and almost windless. Every time I start a task involving me wearing my reading glasses I start dripping sweat on them almost immediately. Even outside, when I transferred some diesel from the jerry can to the tank, I worked up a sweat and that was in the breeze.
I’ve got the 24V to 12V charger working now, I’ve manually switched between the engine start, generator start, and 12V house bank to charge them. They all needed a good amount of bulk charge and absorption. I’m a bit worried that the house bank is pretty much dead and am going to try a shock treatment for batteries called battery equalization which may make the problem better or kill the batteries completely.
Evening
I’ve got the potatoes soaking in water (they were in the fridge – which might have given them an “off” taste) and will grill a chorizo sausage later – those 2 are thawing out in the fridge right now.
The boat is rolling about in 1-2 knots of breeze, but only occasionally does it get into a rolling frenzy, so I’ll stay aboard.
Dinner
I remained aboard all day after all, no happy hour ashore for me. I made a simple dinner of boiled/baked potato with spicy Merguez sausage on the BBQ.