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CWF Africa to the Americas

Day 31: Dark Times

sunset adam day 30 pf
Sun setting on the 30th day, doom about to overtake our electrical system the next morning.

It was the beginning of another day on the JRH. By that, I mean it was the middle of a four-hour row shift and I felt on the verge of collapse in my seat while waiting to cry, fall off my seat, or slam my shin with the oar. It’s hard to tell when one day starts or another ends, but we’ll start there.

Slowly, the odd energy boost I get around first-light started to kick in and I was belting out a mash up of Sublime, Venga Boys, Beach Boys, and Cyndi Lauper. I say mash-up not because I’m gaining adept DJ lyricism out here but because I don’t really remember more than a handful of lyrics from any of the songs and my sleepless mind wanders fairly quickly. As the sun came up, I was hopeful for another day, and two hours or so of hard sleep. Little did I know what was to come that morning.

Shifts came and went that morning relatively calmly. Naked men (Jordan & Markus) cleaned 10-20lb of sea beasts off the hull of our boat with a paint scraper and cutting board as I steered the boat, and Adam attempted to fix our Airmar weather station.

“Hey – done with the Airmar. Want me to start working on the wind turbine?”
“Do you know what you need to do to it?”
“Not at all!”
“Well, just let me deal with it on my off shift then.”

we pulled about 500 of these from the hull of the boat
We pulled about 500 of these from the hull of the boat.

Great. I finally had a good opportunity to have a useful impact on boat life and shore up our power supply. It had been relatively low compared to what we had expected since the start of the trip. We had one working battery out of 3, so any boost in power generation would be good. You know, more iPod charges and email time.

Adam turn off the power.
Got it.
OK disconnect one wire re attach, firmly to other.
Done
Reconnect power
Done
Blade is turning in a power generating fashion.  Looking good…
Sparks in the breaker box!  Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off!
Done.
OK fiddle with wires. Better connection, no fuses blown on the first go round.
Reconnect power.
Now Adam’s got sparks in the battery compartment!
Off, turn it off!
All is black.  No power.  No battery sensor read out. It just got dark.

Not because it was the middle of the night. In fact it was quite sunny and blazingly hot in the cabin. It’s dark because all the little blinking lights went out, we’re 1000nm from our start point, and in an attempt to make more power I’m pretty sure we’ve fried it all.
At this point you’d expect some panic , maybe some crying (we seem to cry over less out here). But luckily it was lunch time and all thoughts were preoccupied with refueling the rowing engine. A delicious mix of broccoli beef stir fry, southwest chicken, and shepherds pie later…
Refueled.
Quick disparaging remarks about how long the four-hour row shift will be without the iPod.  The sound of oars in the water is only Zen for so long, especially when drown out by snoring from the cabin.  Plus the four-hour row shift always gets disparaging remarks.

Call Dan Heyl.  Get the info on replacing fuses on the battery terminals.
Set up a splash guard, a sleep sheet made of hi tech ”cotton” material, over the battery compartment and go to town.
Batt 1 back online.
Batt 2 back online.
Both at full charge too.
Now, not only are we back at power but the double strength battery bank that had been dead weight up til now is showing full charge.  Giving us 200 more Amps of power, only 1.2 something gigawatts more til we can travel back in time!

Moral of the story: luckily I broke the heck out of something so that with Dan Heyl’s tutelage we could not only fix the problem but come out with more power and a flying fish wind sock that looks suspiciously like a wind turbine.

Oh yeah we’re making 3 knots right now too, gents.  Just another day, and still 8 hours til the 4 hour row shift.