Mc Guyver

Like every morning, today starts quite normally at 8 o'clock with
breakfast. Jean-Claude and I look like people who are short of sleep,
but what ! this is to be expected.
After breakfast, Jean-Francois goes for his nap and I turn on the
freezer that I had stopped yesterday morning to defreeze valves and
temperature sensor. Nothing happen !
I swich everything off, restart in the proper sequence, nothing. I
fiddle with the thermostat. Nothing. Shoooot ! Looks like another
disaster looming.
I sit down and try to think of the best course of action. Move all the
frozen food to the freezer of the regrigerator. What does not fit but
would keep for a while, put it in the fridge. The rest, cook it and eat
it as soon as possible.
10:00 = Jean-Francois comes on deck. Action. We move the food and start
thinking of how to tackle the problem. Obviously, first possibility
would be a failed electric connection. To expose the freezer unit, we
have to remove all eight drawers in the galley, remove the kind of boxes
in which those drawers fit and expose the unit.
Electric meter. Check the main switch. There is electricity. Check the
connection leading to the unit. It's OK. Check the unit itself. OK. So,
it is not the power supply. My eyes wander around and I spot an orange
double cable, with a bad looking splice 2 inches away from the
domino.Why would you splice that cable so close to the domino ! and not
with a proper fitting but with electric tapes ! Anyway, this is our
luck. All we have to do is cut the both cables, clean the end, put then
in the domino, et voila ! This cable is the one going to the thermostat
which acts as a switch.
Put back the boxes, put back the drawers, move the food back in the
freezer, and we are back in business. Now, it's lunch time (pork chops
with baked beans).
As we finish lunch, the wind drops to less than 10 knots and the sails
keep flapping noisily, the rigging is shaking and we are crawling at
less than 3 knots. From 1 p.m. to 5 p,m,, we keep trying everything,
roll up the genoa, remove the third and second reef. Jibe. Jibe back.
Roll out the genoa. Roll it back. Jibe once more. Never mind, start the
engine and keep only the main.
What ! Do you think you can motor for 700 miles. No way. Stop the
engine. Now we are doing 7 knots with a squall passing by helping us.
Then he goes away and the wind drops again. Prepare the gennaker. Three
squalls are coming. Put the gennaker back in the bag. Roll out the
genny. Does not work. Pole it. Does not work. Wing to Wing. Does not
work. We end up at 6:00 p.m. going WNW with 6 knots of wind, less than
3 knots of speed, but we are moving westward. Patience.

Today, despite all that, we closed on the finish by 129 miles, we
covered 133 over the ground and we have 688 miles to go.
And tonight, I have a major celebration, which will require a few shots
of Barbancourt. As of noon today, I have sailed Papy Jovial for 10,071.8
miles.
See you tomorrow . . . .