March Tues 15th After waking I checked the sails this morning to find that there was a large tear in the main sail on the outer layer on the windward side between first and second reefs. We had been on the first reef overnight. We have reefed down to the second reef to prevent further damage. To make any attempt to repair this we need to lay the sail out flat on the ground, and glue the layers together. Almost impossible on the boat while sailing. So we will be on second reef for the next 1000 miles to Hiva Oa. We may even have to wait until Tahiti to get it repaired by a sail maker so that it will get us home to Australia. Bummer. Luckily the winds are a bit stronger today so we are still doing 6-7 Kts on seconf reef. Expect to get to Hiva Oa around 22 March, 7 days away. Sailmail have disabled my email account again for using up too much time. This is not because I am sending a lot of mail, it is because my download speed is so slow. At times it gets down to 200 Bytes per minute. My upload speed is OK, 3000 5000 Bytes per minute. This indicates some noisy device on the boat that causes the radio to not hear the signal correctly so that the transmission has to be repeated several times. I need to morph into Sherlock Holmes again and sniff out the noisy device. It is not any of the normal devices like fridges, freezers etc. I turned these off to test them a couple of days ago and they made no difference. The noise is coming from some other device that is not normally shut off just by turning off all the circuit breakers on the 12Volt distribution panel. Things like the solar panel charge controller or a computer or some battery powered device like a Carbon monoxide sensor. The morph into Sherlock Holmes was successful. I put on a set of headphones so that I could listen to the radio noise without disturbing the rest of the crew. Very considerate captain I am. I noticed that the noise varied in frequency, unusual as there is not much in the middle of the pacific that will do this except something on the boat. Then I noticed that it increased in frequency as we went faster while surfing down a waves. Got i! it has to be the hydro generator. We lifted the generator out of the water and noise reduced by about 60%. Then disconnected the Hydrogenerator controller no difference, it is not the controller making the noise. This is good news because this controller is also used for the some of the solar panels. With this major noise gone we could still hear other noises. One loud one was a tick tick tick We turned off the circuit breaker for the auto pilot. Good and bad news on this one. Good that the tick tick tick another 25% of the noise went away, bad that was on the autopilot circuit. I am very attached to our autopilot I do not want to turn it off every time I want to send or receive email. So while Jacqui did an excellent job of hand steering Sherlock Holmes darted around the boat pulling fuses on different pieces of navigation equipment powered on this circuit breaker. Jeremy guessed it correctly, it was the wind speed sensor. This is the little sensor sitting at the top of the mast reading the wind speed and direction. A very important piece of information for sailing and used by the autopilot. Ok with these two loud noises gone we can hear some other culprits. The freezer is noisy as well, the fridge and cold box are OK. Good news is that with all these noisy devices turned off, we could hear the weak time signal from station WWV-10 on the 10 MHz band indicating that our radio reception and email download speed should increase significantly. I now have to work out how to reduce the noise from these devices. The freezer is easy, just turn it off at the Nav station circuit breaker when sending emails. Important thing is to remember is to turn it back on when finished. Wind speed sensor probably have to replace. To stop this noise during the email session we just need to unplug it, but that means someone has to hand steer because the autopilot needs the wind sensor data. It would be possible to steer using a compass heading but downwind in a wing on wing config we need to follow the wind accurately as it swings about. Hydrogenerator need to contact the supplier for advice. March Wed 16 Quiet day moving along slowly with second reef in main with wing on wing sail config. The genset cabinet had some oil in the bottom of it this morning. Not a good sign. It was not much so could have been caused by the dip stick not being put back in correctly but the dip stick seemed to be in the correct position. I mopped up the oil and will check later. Crew are sleeping or reading books. Jeremy is reading up on celestial navigation and tracking our progress on a paper chart. I had plans to do the same, but maybe I will just plot them on a nice new chart when we get home from records in the log book. Then hang it on the wall. Not the way that it is supposed to be done. Checked the genset again after it had been running for a while, there is another small amount of oil in the bottom of the enclosure. It think I can see where it is coming from but will check it tomorrow after it cools down. We ran the port engine to charge the batteries instead of the genset. Watched a great documentary about an American musician called Rodregus who was not popular in America but was hugely successful in South Africa, but did not know it until 30 years later. ————————————————- Do not push the “reply” button to respond to this message if that includes the text of this original message in your response. Messages are sent over a very low-speed radio link. The most concise way to reply is to send a NEW message to: ianonzoom@zoomaway.net.au If you DO use your reply button, be sure to delete the original message text and these instructions from your reply. Replies should not contain attachments and should be less than 5 kBytes (2 text pages) in length. This email was delivered by an HF private coast station in the Maritime Mobile Radio Service, operated by the SailMail Association, a non-profit association of yacht owners. For more information on this service or on the SailMail Association, please see the web site at: www.sailmail.com