Day 10

0300 zulu (117 miles to go - if we were going in a straight line)
Lat 5 deg 54 min N
Long 159 deg 15 min W
Course 201 T
Speed 5kts motoring ( since 0600 this morning)
wind 7 kts from the N, NE, NW....
Swell 1 meter from the e/ene
cloud cover 30%
Bar 1011 falling

We went back to sailing on Dennis' watch last night, and managed to sail until the end of mine. We have been motoring since. On the up side, we have a full tank of good water, the batteries are all the way charged up, and we are dry. On the down side, it is too slow! We have decided we would rather have wind and rain than no wind at all.

So, since it was sunny and flat, we had a chore day. All the pillows and towels and rugs were hung out and are now dry and semi better smelling. I went through the fresh food and tossed some interesting science experiments and managed to save some zuchinni and the little oranges. I made eggs and corn beef hash for breakfast (the guys probably wondered what was wrong). Anyway that was good. The moldy eggs, not so good. Will definitely be cracking the rest of these individually into a separate bowl. So yes - it is very humid and 88 degrees in the salon right now. I cleaned the stove (BTW Dan K if you are reading thanks again for helping us with that - I love it) and generally tidied.

Dennis decided to work on the generator. Pumped the water out of the head (?) where it shouldn't be and then sprayed WD40 into the head to get it dry. Funny - we proved that diesel engines will combust on more than just diesel. You should have seen Dennis jump. He asked me to turn the key so the engine would turn over and it started - on WD40!! Probably had to be here, but made me laugh. Looks like it is a blown head gasket, next is to find out where the water is coming from so we don't have a repeat performance. More on that later.

During all this poor Josh was back on watch. Next thing you hear is "Dad - the steering went out". Luckily Dennis was working on the generator, so our bed was already torn up and he was able to see the hydraulics. The lever got turned off. Josh said we went 180 degrees to the right and 180 degrees back. Happened two more times. He also saw a ship on the AIS - 780 feet on the way to Panama canal.

We will make Fanning tomorrow - pray that it is in time to catch slack water to get in the channel - that means pray for wind. Oh yeah and for those of you whom tomorrow is Monday, for us it will be Tuesday. Fanning stays on the same time as the western most Islands (where the capital is) of Kiribati. Thank you Carla and Doug for reminding us.

More tomorrow

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