Ben Edwards, crew whole expedition 8 October UTC 21.00
We have a challenge. As of Tuesday we have headwinds predicted that will stop us going anywhere. If we want to return home any time in the immediate future we have to get to Ireland within three days. If we can’t we are, in his words, stuck. This is going to be a tense seventy two hours. Brilliant! After the last I-don’t-know-how-many days is fifty and sixty knots winds, and more predicted, it is nice to have a deadline. It makes sense to me. My new saloon sleeping arrangement is very nice. The only draw back is that I have to vacate it when everyone else gets up. Still.
At the end of my last blog I told you the engine had stopped, and we didn’t know why. Well, the engine is working again and we’re fairly sure we know the root cause. Gravity. We were using the fuel tanks on the port hand side of the boat. The same side that we’re heeled over on. As such those fuel tanks were below the engine, which meant fuel had to be pumped up to the engine rather than just across, or down. The fuel pump therefore couldn’t cope and wasn’t supplying the engine with any fuel. Hence it shut down. When we switched fuel tanks to test whether there was a fuel contamination problem we switched to another port side tank. Which of course didn’t work. We then switched again to a starboard tank and voila, there was life. At length this theory was deduced by the fine minds of Mike and Andrew. Thanks you two, much appreciated.
Looking at the forecast we hope for a good day tomorrow. See you in Ireland soon. Bye.