I’m heading SE now, toward Baja. This on the advice of weather guru Don Anderson, who expects very light wind out where I am by tomorrow. He thinks I have more chance of wind within 30 miles of the coast. So I’ve turned the boat that way. Problem is, it will take me at least a couple of days to reach the coast, and the wind is not forecast to hold that long. So I think I’m going to get stuck anyway.
The excitement this morning was a short in a deck fitting going to my towed electrical generator. I noticed once or twice the slight smell of smoke or gunpowder during the night. I hunted all over and couldn’t find anything. Then this morning, I noticed the smell way aft and stuck my head in under the deck back by the rudder fitting. To my shock, I saw sparks when I jiggled a wire going up to the deck. It turns out a wire was loose going to the generator, and as the boat rolled, it made contact and then sparked. It had melted the entire deck fitting. So the towed generator is out for now. I’ll have to see if I can fix this problem while underway. Don’t think I have a spare thru-deck electrical connector, but I can always connect the wires manually with spade contacts.
I also got the toilet fixed and fixed a drain blockage to the galley sink. So for the moment, except for the deck connection, nothing is broken. Let’s hope it stays that way!
Doug (my son) tells me that my position reports are for 8:00 pm. Well, they are actually for noon my time, but they are listed as Greenwich Mean Time, which is 8 hours ahead of me. So an 8:00 pm (20:00) position report is actually noon local time.
The weather is gray, cool and boring. Haven’t seen the sun all day. I really look forward to getting down to the tropics. I’m tired of being bundled up on deck. At night the temperature is in the 50s. That’s too cold for me. Another three or four days and it should be warmer.
Fair winds,
David 27 19N 116 15W (a long ways from home and a very, very long ways from Panama)