Today we had more good and not as good news. One reason will be that this blog will be very short. For starters, our solar panels are not keeping up, we’re not sure if 3 of the 5 panels have failed. We were doing great but the last two days have been an issue and the generator does not seem to be able to charge as we expected.
In the afternoon I started up our water maker and immediately lost pressure in the line. After a few hours of troubleshooting we were no further ahead. We have enough drinking water but had hoped to make enough water for laundry, showering and rinsing dishes. Let’s hope we can figure it out.
Not all was glum news however, the highlights of our day was a Church service outside in the cockpit. Kirsten and Jaeden did a great job of preparing some great messages for the rest of us. We also had a pod of about 100 dolphins that followed us for about half an hour. We all ran to the bow of the boat to watch them as they zig zagged in front of us as they bounced in and out of the water.
This evening the water around us was filled with the coolest phosphorescence. We turned out our navigation light for a few minutes to that we could see the blue green glow coming off of the waves our boat made as we splashed up the water around us. It was so magical that Orin and Eli insisted on having some seawater scooped up and brought to their room so they could play with the phosphorescence.
LATITUDE: 10-01.90N LONGITUDE: 124-25.81W COURSE: 202T SPEED: 5.4 MARINE: NO WIND_SPEED: 2 WIND_DIR: SSE CLOUDS: 100% BARO: 1008 TREND: 2 AIR_TEMP: 26.0C COMMENT: Did we just hit the doldrums? Just started some motoring. … Current Location
That makes me nervous- do you have backup fresh water if you can’t get the panels working for another 25 days? I wish I could see a video of the phosperescence and the dolphins- I bet they were beautiful!
Maybe you’ll have to figure out how to collect rainwater. Sticky salt-water-washed clothing isn’t the most fun. Hope your kids have fun figuring out all the incredible natural phenomena you’ll see. Have you seen the rainball yet?
As with the older solar panels, there must be a fuse in line with the output. Looks like you are moving along nicely.