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October 23, 1998
San Francisco to Hawaii, Second Attempt. Update #32
32. Date: Fri, 23 Oct 98 04:09:39 GMT
Latitude: 27 degrees 57.174 minutes North
Longitude: 134 degrees 20.970 minutes West
Light air gave way to gentle Southerly, Force 3-4 early this morning, injecting a little life into a placid ocean. Not that we're asking for weather now, this week's calms have been exactly the right catalyst we needed to physically and mentally chill out and really start enjoying the voyage.
Today we had the first Dorado visit, the glistening 30 pounder jumping up around the boat displaying his yellow tail and rainbow hide. On the Atlantic these fish would keep us company for weeks, and Jason even nicknamed the largest "107", because we only had 106 days food -fast running out. This time we will not eat our fish companions. Jason, for reasons of personal ethic (we have plenty of food and don't need to kill for it) and myself for more practical reasons (I know from experience that a sudden change in diet would give me a dreadful bout of the "runs").
Now early evening again, and light air returns. Our progress today has been slow, partly because we spent the afternoon scrubbing thousands of goose neck barnacles off of the hull and because we had to service a noisy pedal drive unit in which we discovered fu1l of sea water but no lubrication. In the absence of any corrosion, we assume that sea water has slowly penetrated the prop shaft seals over time. Luckily the unit is easily taken apart, exposing the gears on which we have smeared lithium grease. The dried-out, re-lubed system still grinds somewhat, but is doing its job just fine - and drowning out Jason's snoring at the same time!
Lewis & Smith,
The Moksha crew
Posted on October 23, 1998 6:15 PM