Day 8: What time is it?
Yesterday’s strong winds with a short steep swell helped us achieve some excellent milage for Christmas day. Today’s conditions have calmed quite considerably.
This allowed me to check the solar panel locker for any water ingress. You may remember that the first time I checked, it was bone dry.🎉
When I slid my hand this time, there was no dust to be found. I pulled my hand out to check my fingertips. Yip, no dust, but there was moisture.
Condensation or seawater was my next thought.
😛 So what would any investigator worth his salt do? Yip, the tongue top test.
Crap, salt water! For goodness 🤬 sake, how can it still be leaking?
Last time we had two defensive measures in place
1) waterproof box
2) waterproof connectors.
Both failed.
This time I added another barrier.
I cast the new matching connectors in foam to prevent water from ever reaching the new connectors.
The solar connectors inside foam blocks
It seems as if the waterproof box is no longer waterproof. Even so, I am confident that the connectors will not even get a drop of salt water on them.
I had a good fresh water wash this morning but noticed the beginnings of gunwale bum. The case of the dreaded inflamed, pimple-like hair follicles that, if not treated, can progress to boils or worse. Last thing I need when I am sitting on my backside 24/7.
Out with Sudocrem. Perhaps I should have used the cream right from the beginning as a precautionary measure. Let’s watch this space as it progresses. Hopefully regresses, but you know what I mean.
Be warned that if it gets worse, I will likely take a picture of it, so let’s hope for an improvement. 🤞
Some strange things have been happening to the clocks on board.
My cell phone and Garmin watch somehow show different times, even though I ensured they were the same a few days ago. I even made contact with the shore team and was an hour early.
Today again, it’s happened that the times were out. I do realise that I have travelled across a time zone by going West, but I want the clocks to remain on South African time, so I always make contact with the time that suits their daily lives. On board, life just goes ahead according to the sun.
Well, the Garmin watch is quite a fancy unit. A Quantic 6 was given to me by one of my biggest supporters Seaport Supply. This watch can even talk to my chart plotter, autopilot, and a gazillion other very clever marine apps. So I took a deep breath and dived into the rabbit hole of watch settings. Eventually, I found the time settings. As I was re-adjusting the time, it asked whether I wanted to sync with my phone or GPS.
Aha!
The default was GPS, which automatically updates to the correct time zone.
All sorted. Now I should have no excuse to miss another shore team check-in.
Thank you to everyone who sent messages of encouragement, strength and hope. I really appreciate every one of them.
I now have to move on and focus on an upcoming two days of gale force Southerly winds with gusts predicted up to 40kn. The biggest test yet is coming.
Co-ordinates: S 28°45.33 E014°00.86
Breakfast: finished the mince pies
Food: not hungry but did have Indonesian Chicken with lemongrass and rice.
Bird of the day: Great-winged Gadfly Petrel.
Sea life: gazillion more blue bottles
