By Brian Bell

Next day we were still sailing but having to use the engine for battery charging. We had to record and report all use of the engine for propulsion and it would incur a time penalty on our corrected time at the finish. So for battery charging we kept the engine in neutral. The windmill generator was not giving anywhere near enough output to keep the batteries charged with the VHF radio on continuously and the navigation lights on all night. At least the Hydrovane self steering didn't use electricity.

Tuesday saw me and Mike D feeling a lot better (we always feel a bit queasy for the first few days of a sailing trip) and able to do more justice to Nick's cooking. We also radioed Vi using the HF SSB radio, but having to contact Lyngby Coast Radio Station in Denmark on a 12 MHz channel to get patched into the telephone system. (The only HF coast radio station in the UK, Portishead, has been closed by BT - disgraceful). Reception was loud and clear at both ends. We radioed to our various homes and relations several times during the crossing, once through Lagos in Portugal when we couldn't raise Lyngby. Sometimes reception was not very good, usually because of thunderstorms somewhere.

Then the engine died................... Looking into the engine compartment we could see what appeared to be a huge amount of oil in the bilge. Our first thoughts were that the engine had seized, but it seemed to be quite free. A closer examination revealed that the oil had come out of a pipe used to pump oil out of the engine when changing the oil. Fortunately, I had modified the pipe last winter so that it could be removed, but it was a messy job. Sure enough, one of the welds on the pipe had cracked, so after thoroughly degreasing it, I put on a sleeve of wire-reinforced Araldite over the weld. (It is still there and holding well). After putting more oil in the engine and cleaning out the bilge, the engine started and seemed quite happy. We couldn't work out why the engine had stopped, but we found out much later.

Weather forecasts were transmitted to ARC yachts which had satellite communications every afternoon, and one yacht then broadcast that forecast to the ARC fleet by SSB radio at 2200 UTC. This worked well at first but as the yachts got more spread out, it became increasingly difficult to get adequate reception, particularly when there were thunderstorms about. We, and some other yachts with similar equipment, were able to receive weatherfax charts from the SSB radio using Michael's laptop computer, so we could (albeit with our limited knowledge) analyse the situation for ourselves. A depression was starting to cause SW winds so we headed further south, though the ARC forecast promised NE or E trade winds "early next week" which was encouraging. However, on 24th the ARC forecast said that the depression was going more north and that winds would be very light below latitude 18 degrees. We were at about 23 degrees so we decided to turn more west though the forecast indicated that the winds would be a bit light in our area.

On 25th November (22 deg 58'N, 22 deg 6'W) we put up the cruising chute (a very large lightweight jib) and the mainsail as we were on a broad reach. The mainsail tended to make the boat luff to windward during gusts and the Hydrovane self-steering could not cope with this very well, so we hand-steered. That night the wind became very light and the cruising chute snagged against something on the mast and tore about 27 feet of the leech tape away from the sail, as well making as some horizontal tears. Michael had to climb the mast (at night) to free the sail. It took nearly two days to hand sew the tape back on, with Nick doing most of it. The horizontal tears were repaired with spinnaker tape, none of which matched the colours of the chute! We used the cruising chute a few times again, but we found we could get just as good performance downwind from twin headsails, one out each side, and they were more controllable. We only had one pole which was used to keep the roller genoa out to windward, and Michael rigged the mainsail boom to keep the hanked-on genoa (on the emergency forestay) out to leeward. This worked well but the whole lot had to be gybed if the wind went towards the other side.

By the 27th (22 deg 16'N, 25 deg 45'W) the wind was very light or sometimes nothing, and there is nothing worse than sails "slatting" from side to side as the boat rolls, so we were now using the engine for periods of propulsion, though we tried to minimise it. The weather was now a major topic of conversation between yachts on the radio. In spite of a depression ahead of us, we decided to continue west rather than go further south to try to avoid it because our weather charts showed even less wind there. The ARC forecast was continuing to promise that the NE trade winds would return in a few days.

We knew the positions of most of the other yachts from the daily radio "roll call" over the SSB radio. The yachts were divided into four groups by size, Group D had the smallest boats and included us. Each group reported at different times of the day, the Group D roll call being at 1630 UTC. There was supposed to be about 4 radio net controllers in each group, but most of our net controllers dropped out because of technical trouble and so we volunteered to help. The duty net controller would call each yacht in the group in turn to report its 1200 (UTC) position, wind speed and direction, number of hours of engine use (for propulsion) and miles travelled under engine. This could take about 30 to 45 minutes. The net controller recorded all this information, as did a yacht in the group which had satellite communications. This yacht then e-mailed the data to ARC HQ in Cowes, Isle of Wight, where the information was put on the Internet. We were net controller about every 3 days. The SSB radio takes quite a lot of current when transmitting so we were glad we didn't have to do it more often. The roll call sounds very formal but it was very interesting to hear about other yachts' progress and incidents (fish caught and ones that got away, engine and rig problems, and humorous position reporting!).

Part 4

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