May 23/11 JST
Position: 21°17'N, 157°53'W (Honolulu)
Remaining distance to Yokohama finish: 13.4%
News stays good from Dave Cooper and Team Hawaii, as Saito-san sets his departure date for this coming Saturday.
Aloha, some good progress and a wee bit of luck today.
- Genset is back working. There was a resistor installed in the wiring that I could not figure out but did not want to remove it for fear of blowing up the new voltage regulator. Hal Rainwater came and after checking all my wiring, the new schematic and the stars, decided that someone had added it for some reason, perhaps the old regulator had failed and this external resistor was added to make it work. We do know that the unit has been worked on sometime as the original circuit breaker was changed to a fuse. In any case I removed the resistor and the voltage came up fine.
- The autopilot is back at the same level as it was when Jerry removed it to send back. We will try to do a calibration on the sea trial on Monday and see if that corrects the wandering compass error.
- The depth sounder has started giving strange readings and the repeater shows a different depth that the master…virtually impossible as they are on the same SeaTalk bus…but that is what is happening. In opening the panel to see what was back there it was one mess of green corrosion. We cleaned up what we could but one of the wires had broken off from the wind instrument. These are the very tiny crimped terminals that Raymarine uses…hard to find anywhere. However Swan Song had some spares so a quick trip to my boat and that is now back in business. We’ll leave the depth sounder to be dealt with in Japan…not much shallow water between here and there.
- Mike [Seymour, Saito 8 Safety Officer in Tokyo] asked that the rudder, rams, and rudder feedback units all be checked as these had been problems in the past. All are A-OK and the emergency tiller is now located in the aft head and relatively easy to get to.
A few more items to be done tomorrow [Sunday] and then the sea trial and fueling on Monday.
Saito-san consulted the charts today and thinks that Saturday is the best day to leave. Team Hawaii, I don’t know who will be around to help him off the dock, etc., but can someone step forward? Plus his provisioning run and clearing out?
A long but successful day, for a change ;-)
Cheers,
Dave
