Thursday 4 November Uh oh!

Day 4 of our crossing. For the first 2 days we flew along in good winds making 190nm a day. And then we hit a dead zone. Not enough wind to fill the sails so we had been motoring for 24 hours. At 1am I came up to take over the watch until 7am. David had stripped off his cold weather clothes (it's been much colder at night than we've experienced in the last 2 years) when the engine over heating alarm went off. Uh oh! There goes our quiet night.
David 'Mechanical Genius' went in to action. First to diagnose what our problem was. It was the raw water, or sea water, cooling pump. For the mechanical minded readers, inside the cam shaft behind the impeller there are two drive plates, one has groove across the face and the matching a key that fits into the slot driving the circulation of water. These two pieces had not been fitted together correctly before we bought the boat and spat the dummy mid passage. Perhaps better to lose the engine her than when negotiating a tricky reef or a busy anchorage.
When David decided the water pump was not repairable we had to come up with an alternative pump to jury rig in line. We didn't have a spare, the AC pumps run on 240v, however the sea water deck wash pump is 24v and easy to disengage as it's under the seating in the forward cabin. David fitted it using spare water hose that we happened to have bought in Tonga and suspended the unit above the engine in a cradle of lines.
By the time he'd finished dawn was breaking and the wind had picked up to allow us to sail at a decent speed. We set the sails and David finally went off to bed while I did an extended watch.

Ride 'em cowboy

the butch look

Lightening the mood, here is Jackster's intrepid captain pulling out the main sail with a jury rigged pulley after the outhaul motor quit yesterday and looking for ships on the horizon.   I call it his gay sailor look!