32) Somewhere off the coast of Morocco

34° 08.792 N 008° 34.019 W

Somewhere off the coast of Morocco

Last night the wind machine turned off.  Well, it got so low that we could not sail and had to motor.  I was off at 9pm and John was then on from 9pm-12am.  He fired the motor up at 9:30 since the batteries needed a charge, too.  I figured it would run all night.  Now here’s what happens to you on a boat when your circadian rhythm gets a-kilter.  I woke up when the motor was turned off and thought it was morning;  or his 3-hour watch was over; or the wind came back up, and other stuff.  But I think I looked at my watch and saw that it was 10:30pm and I had only been asleep an hour.  I thought that wasn’t a very long time to run the motor and charge the batteries.  Back to sleep. 

I was due on watch 6 hours later at 3am.  While sleeping I kept waking up because the boat was rocking all over and the sails were slapping and popping really loud.  I thought what the hell is going on and why don’t they adjust the heading to fill the sails properly and stop the flogging and then find a better angle to take the following seas.  The seas were lifting us and then we would wallow about.  That’s hard to sleep through let alone the noise of sails popping when they fill.

At 2:30 I had had enough and got up to see what was going on.  Alan was in the cockpit and John was in the engine room.  At 10:30pm last night a radiator hose failed and the engine overheated.  John had been working on the motor since then and finished sometime in the early dawn.  Wow!  Then to make matters worse when the hose blew, it filled the engine room with steam and shorted out some stuff.  That’s the easiest way to put it.  While I was at the helm and they were down below an alarm went off after turning on the ignition.  A really, really loud alarm.  The good news was that the engine ran but we could not stop the alarm.  Since Alan had just come off watch and he was very tired they decided he should sleep and then try to figure it out in the morning.  We continued on drifting with the main and staysail up.

When the sun came up John and I unrolled the Genoa and once again proceeded to drift trying to get the boat to move in 3-5 knots of wind.  Then it got wrapped.  Luckily after only trying for about 15 minutes we got it unwrapped and settled in to drifting.  Time went by really slow.  A lot of time went by.  Alan was up.  He got to work.  Now we’re on to something.  But, uh-oh he was having a very hard time isolating the electrical problem.  Hmm…

Long story longer, at 9am John popped in the cockpit with 2 beers and yes we drank beer at sea at 9am while drifting because there was still no wind.  It would be easy to surmise that our problems were a result of having beer for breakfast but in fact having that beer was because of it.  Pretzels were on the menu to follow. 

Somewhere during all this Alan figured out to disconnect the helm in the cockpit from the helm in the main salon and that stopped the alarm and then we could start the motor.  But, we had to be careful that the motor was ok.  Ugh, there were so many issues and decisions and stuff and here it is 3-4 days later and I’m trying to do this from memory.

We were 47 miles off the coast of Morocco and drifting.  We were rolling all over the place and there was no way of stopping it.  It was so quiet and peaceful.  John would periodically go down and look at the navigation information and pop and say, “we’ll be on the beach in 3 days”.  I pointed east and said Morocco?  And he said, yes.  Then he says, we’ll be in the Canaries on December 20^th.  That was uhm 25 days away.  It was supposed to be a 5-day passage.  At least there is humor.

To top it off we needed to be in port before the storm hit that was predicted for The Canaries on Sunday.  All I gotta say right now is that I am in port in the Canaries, it is almost midnight on Monday 12/28 and the storm is here and it is bad.  We are in a marina and the shit is hitting the fan.  There will be more on this later.   

So, the engine issue cost us a twelve and a half hour delay.  That did not sit well knowing the storm was on its way.  The motor was started at 11:10am and we were off.  It’s interesting how things change so fast.   

Yep, we went around in circles.  Whattya gonna do?

                                                                            

The motor works and it was like we were shot out of a cannon.  Previously, 7 knots was great, then 5 then 3 then 2 then 1 then anything above zero.  It’s funny what you will accept after a while of drifting at sea.  Any movement on the speed indicator kept us interested.  After all, sailing races are won in light airs.  If we got anything we must be doing something half-ass right.