It's a gorgeous night to be at sea. The moon is bright and stars fill the sky and the ENE breeze is soft. Far off to our SE we can see towering cumulus clouds - suggesting convection - but see no squalls close by or threatening. We have begun to head south now as the front emanating from cyclonic gale down south had moved a bit north and is bringing thunderstorms to our east. As I write this a weatherfax of the Pacific streamline analysis is coming through in the background; we are receiving these twice per day from Hawaii. These reports, which are specific to the tropics, give us the location of all the major systems - highs, lows, cyclonic lows, troughs, etc. - in the Pacific and show us lines of constant wind.
We just dodged the 803 Dong Won for the second time today. The nice thing about these long liners is they DO seem to run their AISes (which is more than we can say for the purse seiners) and that their movements are fairly predictable. Our AIS is about the simplest one you can buy but it gives us the data we need to accurately track and avoid larger vessels who are complying with regs and transmitting data. This is our first passage with this new instrument installed.
When we started our engine today to generate power, we noticed our raw water pump wasn't pumping water. We shut down, of course, and Philip tore down the system and found nothing of note but changed the V belt that drives it. This solved the problem. When we get to a well protected anchorage we plan to sand down (both) engine pulleys and apply some paint. We had a belt split and spew water on the engine when underway to Majuro and think that the pulleys are starting to rust and wear belts prematurely. Or so is the theory..
At 5/29/2012 and 11:38 UTC (GMT) our position was: 02°56.62'S / 172°51.72'E.
We were traveling 185T degrees true at 3.6 knots.
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