Doldrums

Busy days on Bahrain Team Pindar as I negotiate the infamous doldrums, and deal with a host of technical problems on board.
 
It feels like I am over half way through the doldrums as the wind certainly shifted in the middle of last night from the SE to the NE and I am sailing into an increasing swell from the NNE, so I hope to be out of the doldrums by tomorrow morning. The doldrums divide the NE tradewinds from the SE tradewinds so it feels like I am not too far away from the steady winds.  However, the doldrums have been moving north with me, so it feels like I have been going slowly for a very long time. I have been getting squalls that have completely killed the wind right back from when I was at Fernando de Noronha island. However, I have gained on Marc who was mired in the Doldrums for a long time, but he should now be free of them, so will pull away till I in turn get free, hopefully before Dee catches up too much more. 
 
In general the wind is 5 to 8 knots, so it is not dead calm. The squalls might have 12 to 15 knots of wind just at their leading edge, which is welcome, except that often it is in wrong direction, and once the squall has passed there might be an hour or more of no wind at all, as you have to wait for the squall to move away whilst you watch the wind on the water coming ever so slowly back  towards you. Much faster overall to avoid the squalls and stay in the steady winds, but easier said than done, as it is a slow motion ballet, as both myself and the squalls are moving very sedately.
 
I would like to spend more time on deck hand steering, trimming the sails, and avoiding the calm parts of the squalls to get through these doldrums, but every day I have been kept busy fixing equipment on board, so that I can get BTP to the finish line in Les Sables. For two days I was working on the alternator that had damaged its fan, and on the second day I got the alternator to purr like a Rolls Royce, so fingers crossed it will last till the end. I have 70 litres of fuel left which is plenty. The wind generator is not making electricity, but I will probably leave that repair until I need the power, so that I can concentrate on sailing (and on other repairs!), and also it is probably a problem inside the unit that I will not be able to fix anyhow.
 
Then I had a day of working on the watermaker which was ultimately successful, and then another long day working on the Fleet 77 communications system and the std C communicator which I could not yet fix. The stdC is not so important, but the Fleet 77 is my last access to high quality weather data. I have done 3 Round the World races with a Fleet 77, and they have never worked till even half way. Salt water and high tech satellite dishes don’t seem to mix. The water always seems to eventually find a way into the electronics. This time the cabling is completely waterlogged and when I cut the cable to make a new connection, salt water pours out of it! I have not completely given up on it though, and will keep trying to get it working.The stdC I will leave now till the finish; like the wind generator, some things are beyond economical repair in the time available.
 
At the end of the communication equipment repair day, I was trimming the sails in the evening and noticed that the canting keel had eased down. Pressing the keel swing button produced some unusual noises from the electrical pump, it was spinning too fast. As I guessed, there was no oil in the reservoir, so where had it gone? Taking off the covers to the rams, the stbd one had lost a lot of oil into the bilge. After a while I saw that it was dripping from the sensor wire that measures the cant of the keel, and it was leaking fast, a litre every hour. So it had probably been leaking for 3 or 4 hours. On talking with Nick and Enrico from Cariboni, we came up with a plan to drain the oil left in that ram into a container and then disconnect it from the system, so that I would not lose any more oil. I needed to stop the boat to take the load off the rams and fortunately the seas were quite calm so I rolled up the headsail and went head to wind, lashing off the 2 wheels together so the rudders would be locked. Then for a couple of hours I was parked there and worked on the system until just the port ram was operational and I had saved the used oil left in the starboard ram.
 
I was lucky to have spotted it as I only have 6 litres of spare oil, and if more had gone into the bilge I may not have had enough to get the system running again. A close call!
 
There is a chance of fixing the stbd ram, after talking with Cariboni, so I will try to get the sensor apart to see what was leaking. It won’t be easy whilst the ram is fitted in place. Meanwhile I am sailing on just one ram, which will limit how hard I can push the boat upwind.
 
Yesterday. In good conditions I went up the mast to check the lower shrouds and put more tape on a chafed area. It was almost a pleasure to go up on a flat sea day and not be thrown around like a rag doll. I had time to take a couple of photos to show the grandkids!
 
There are a few flying fish around and even they are not flying very far in these light winds, just  a short, lazy hop and they are back in the water, hardly better than the birdmen of Bognor. In proper tradewinds they could fly for hundreds of metres, or maybe it's the equatorial heat that has slowed them down.
 
Seen quite a few black petrels, and sometimes up to 5 together, although normally they seem to prefer solitude.
 
Also I am convinced that on 2 evenings on the trot I was visited by the same juvenile gannet, still very brown in colour. I have never seen such bad flying! As it flew close to the waves it would often beat the waves with its wing tips as it banked,- very unprofessional, and as it flew close to the sails, it was so erratic I was ready to catch it if it fell out of the sky. There was no soaring, just furious flapping… The second evening it was slightly better than the first, maybe this was one of its first sorties from its nest? Next time I come by I hope it will be an accomplished pilot.
 
I am sure birds play with the windbends around the sails, just to hone and challenge their flying skills. I was once in Gibraltar walking around the cliffs and there was a vertical chimney naturally carved out of the rock, and with the seabreeze coming in the wind was gently blowing up the chimney. There was a flock of seagulls taking turns to fly into the chimney head first, with their beaks centimetres from the front face of the chimney and their wingtips centimetres from the side of the chimney, they challenged themselves to hover perfectly still. Only one bird at a time could be in the chimney otherwise the windflow would be disturbed, and they patiently waited their turn to get into the wind tunnel. It was amazing to see, and most days we see the same games being played here. When it was the albatross playing it was very special to see.
 
Sea temp is 27.8 degrees at 00 44S 32 04W. 44 miles from the equator!
 
Brian