Over the last few days we’ve been shipping a fair amount of water onto the deck and it runs down the side of the boat, over our bedroom and out of the scuppers on the side. We had a small leak in the hatch over our bed that was gradually getting worse and soaking the bedding. As the conditions had moderated, we decided to quickly fix it. It was a relatively straightforward job of unscrewing the hatch, prying it free, cleaning up the old silicon, bedding it in new silicon sealant and screwing it all back together. The art of it was making sure nothing fell over the side!….
After all that it seems to have worked… however, I changed the bedding before turning in for the night. I got my head down and then was woken up at 10pm with water pouring onto my feet. Despite me resealing the window, I don’t think I latched it up properly so the water still got in… Doh! – i’ve locked it all down now and hopefully we’re all good.
I’m starting to plan our approach into the Marquesas and it looks like the winds will be pretty consistent for the rest of the trip (but who knows in reality).
The thing i’m looking at is 1) what is our ETA as we don’t want to arrive in the dark and 2) are there any obstacles to be aware of it… As luck would have it, there is a Korean fishing fleet working directly in our path.
We’ll need to go around it as there will be gear in the water between the vessels and we don’t want to get snagged in it. The fleet is 60 miles top-to-bottom, so you also don’t want to get in too close… I’m going to take us around the bottom, but of course they don’t stay still, so it’s a bit of a gamble on whether you go above or below. The’re 250 miles way, so we’ll pass them tomorrow night…
