An interesting day to say the least. A good start with the fishing, with Jon ad Chris landing a good sized Dorada, so we had fresh fish for lunch. Rob cooked her up and with a little lemon we had a great meal.
Then the day became interesting to say the least. The autopilot failed completely mid afternoon, unhappy memories resurfaced with the issues we had with our old Hanse and also with our neighbours Matilda at Las Palmas. A message sent to Hanse so hopefully we have some clues on where to start later today.
Evening trundled along, and now Harry the Hydrovane was coming into his own. In the evening with potential of higher winds over night we threw in two reefs. The crew managed showers and so we cranked up the generator for the first time and set the watermaker going. We then sat down to watch the evening movie, Divergent (which has received mixed reviews from the crew (Jon, complicated plot, Rob, Rubbish). Checking around I opened up the floor to look at the water maker lines and found an awful lot of water sloshing around. very strange as Miss Liz II is a very dry boat. A quick taste test revealed it was fresh water...Phew! A quick check of the water levels in Tank 2 showed zero....where had the 69% gone.....and also the 80 liters we had made....obvious answer the bilge, question why? The main water pump was running with no taps open and we traced it finally to the shower on the transom. It was on and the head had blown off, meaning all of our water was in the bilge. Out cae the buckets and sponge, plus a handy hand pump in the locker and the next two hours saw the guys pump out over two hundred liters of water. So, genny stayed on until mid night to get us up to 50% level of water again.
As if that was not enough the Watt and Sea hydrogenerator started to make a horrendous noise, so we pulled it out of the water. Another bit of fun as we calculated power consumption and how we would handle the new situation. Not a problem for us as plenty of fuel onboard for the genny. This morning though we tried the Watt and Sea again and working fine, so all we can think is that the rudder angle we set for Harry to woirk well was causing a vortex which led to the wash on the prop being uneven and hence vibration.
So a fun day, truly Sponge Rob, Fish Pants!! Let's hope today is quieter and we can fix the auto pilot.
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