Umbrella drinks anyone?

0300 zulu
lat 05 deg 32S
long 159 deg 40W
course 185 Mag (ish)
speed 7kt
wind E @ 11kts
Swell E @ 5ft
sunny and hot - no convection today
bar 1008

So, what do you do in the middle of the ocean on a beautiful hot day with decent boat motion? Well some sailors might break out the umbrella drinks, but not Evergreen......
We try to be frugal with power on crossings, and given our luck with our generator, Dennis has not been in a big hurry to fire it up. But, today he decided the conditions were good enough, and the batteries were hungry so it was time to give it a whirl. The generator started right up, but when I looked off the stern to make sure there was water flow - no go. So, 4 hours, 4 storage compartments and 2 pumps later, we came to the conclusion that even the little bit of heel we are having is too much for the pump to get enough water. The up side is that nothing is broken and the problem can be fixed - just not today. The down side - we emptied out four storage compartments, Dennis replaced a perfectly fine pump, with another perfectly fine pump, we took apart the intake hose to the pump all the way to the through hull, and then put everything back together. A busy watch for me, no nap for Dennis and Josh had to get up and drive the boat. But, I had lots of leftovers to heat up for dinner, and although it is not an efficient way to feed the batteries, at least we are able to run the main engine to juice them up.
We have been able to have some hatches open too, which helps with the comfort inside the boat. So yeah, no lounging around with umbrella drinks today - maybe tomorrow. We are thinking that we may make Manihiki on Tuesday. Probably just in time to anchor in the dark again. But hey we are good at that.
The moon will be big and bright again tonight. Look up and think of us.

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