Leg 2 Report
May 18, 2014
Happy Sunday,
We are cruising up the Long Island coast headed for Montauk Point and then a left turn into Block Island Sound and then Narragansett Bay and then into Newport. It has been an eventful 24 hours as we clawed our way out the Hudson River and then New York Harbor in light and variable winds and then turned south to a buoy off Barnegate inlet. Conditions continued to be somewhat light and on the nose so we headed for the beach looking for a wind shift into the west. Instead we got light and swirly winds so tacked back offshore. In the meantime Dragon and Macfarlane drove into the beach further south and picked up the breeze we were looking for and powered ahead of us and Pleiad. At the Barnegate buoy the two boats were about 3 miles in front us and I was kicking myself as I knew we should have stayed close to shore to pick up the new westerly. Oh well - another hole to dig out of.
So last night at around midnight we turned the engine on to charge the batteries which were quite low and found that no cooling sea water was being circulated through the engine. We looked at everything and ended up replacing the water pump but to no avail. So finally we decided to cool the engine ourselves via a bucket brigade of sea water and worked like Egyptian slaves for the next hour - I would fill the bucket off the transom while the boat hammered along at 12 knots and would hand it to Pat who filled the sea water intake strainer. It actually worked and we charged up the batteries in about an hour. However, in the meantime the wind has come up and gone forward which caused us to veer off course to the east with the big 2 kite up. As a result, we ended up abut west of the rhumb line before we completed the engine charge and took down the kite and got back on course. As the sun came up we identified Macfarlane and Dragon to the west and now have our work cut out for us to reel them in before Montauk.
The boats will have a decision to make as to go inside or outside Block Island and anything could happen.
Stay tuned for a hopefully exciting finish tonight. Meanwhile the bucket brigade will continue.
Cheers
Joe
