More Drama - Main engine
CARANGO AMEL 54 #035
PETER and VICKY FORBES
Fri 3 Feb 2017 06:17
| 13:01.18S 030:41.29W Yesterday evening we had a really dramatic sunset and a few evenings ago we saw the most vivid ‘Green Flash’ as the sun went down - yes - we can assert that the ‘green flash’ is a real phenomenon!  Seconds after the ‘Green Flash’.This afternoon the wind dropped so our speed with major sails up dropped below 4kts our threshold of boredom; so on went the iron staysail. But the faithful Volvo came up with a red warning signal - not good news at all. Our hearts sank. The fault indicator showed low battery charge. We moved straight to the front of the engine and found the inevitable auxiliary drive belt in shreds and black disintegrated drive belt dust everywhere - messy. It is a challenge to change this belt in a boat rocking about in the ocean but we had the spare and we managed the change.  Oops - bit of a wide spread there and a very dirty tummy. The deputy skipper taking a sun shot to determine Carango’s location. After several hours of calculation and working with the sun reduction tables, unaltered since the time of James Cook, Peter came up with Carango’s location as 15 miles North of Singapore. Luckily Arthur with only a few minutes of modern technology put us at 530 miles East ofSalvador Brazil. We decided to go with the latter judgement on navigation. |