electric shocks and overflowing bilges

Caribbean 600 Race (Day 2) - Saba to St Barts

We have reached the south east corner of St Barts, at long last!

Despite our best efforts to stay east of a wind hole we could see emerging, our sightseeing tour of St Barts became uncomfortably long. The 3am watch found themselves drifting around in circles, as did our 6am watch. We managed to build up enough boat speed to gybe and head further east, and now finally we have got Argonaut moving again. We are all glad to see the back of St Barts!

In fact, I’m somewhat starting to think that St Barts is a bad luck charm for us. Because at lunchtime yesterday, just as we were first approaching St Barts, Lieneke got an electric shock from the fridge. This alerted us to the fact that the bilges were uncomfortably full. Suffice to say, we turned the fridge off (something that really bodes well for the remaining 4 days of food…), emptied the bilges, and upped the bilge check to every hour. We have since realised that even an hourly pump out is insufficient, so we are now manually pumping the engine bilge out every 20 minutes. Who doesn’t love a leaky prop shaft?

The universe seems to be telling Sam he needs a shower, because every time he touches the helm we hit a squall, and the rain delivers one.

Last night, we had great fun playing three squalls within our three hour watch, and we thoroughly enjoyed the moonlit passage through the Anguilla channel as we rounded St Maarten.

Thankfully, St Barth is getting ever further into the distance, but guess what? Sam has taken the helm, and we’ve hit another squall. Time to buckle up and enjoy the ride!