2/5/12

Noon Position: 43 46' S, 78 55' W, COG 195, SOG 5.7, Day's Run 120nm.
My old friend the the stove is up to his old tricks again - immediately
out of Valparaiso the squeaking began, but I'd learned it's tricks, and
after suffering for an hour in the middle of then night, hoping it would
fix itself, I finally forced myself out of bed and quickly quieted the
offender with some grease. Thus silenced, I returned to sleep, secure
in the knowledge that I had once again struck a blow for justice and
sanity. Little did I realize that my enemy was up to new tricks, and
had recruited conspirators as well. Four days ago it struck it's first
blow - the squeaking started again as we were crashing upwind, and I lay
in bed, hating the swedish and Bulgarian production team that produced
the devilish creature. But suddenly my muttered imprecations were
answered! We went off a particularly loud wave, and the squeaking
stopped! Hah, (I thought), it must have shocked it back into
quiescence. The next morning I awoke, looking forward to a delicious
breakfast of scrambled eggs, and discovered what had really been going
on last night. The squeaking had stopped, sure, but only because the
entire forward gimbal had unscrewed itself and the front of the stove
had fallen off the bulkhead to which it was mounted, managing to jam
itself beneath it's mounting bracket and the food storage bin below.
Much swearing and bending of flimsy sheet metal later, the stove was
back on its mounts, and all was well. Clearly this was an escalation,
but the extent of the increase in hostilities was only evident
yesterday, when I got a lunchtime surprise from the stove's
co-conspirator - We took a big roll, and an entire bottle of canola oil
shot out of the cupboard, bounced once on the counter, then exploded all
over the companionway steps, coating everything (including the genoa in
its sailbag) with a nice heavy film. This was clearly a declaration of
war, and any doubts that I had were immediately put to rest when the
stove once again unscrewed it's forward end that night and fell off,
this time managing to punch a quarter sized hole in the top of my food
bin. I'm not sure what I've done to arouse such enmity, but clearly I
need to do something to pacify the stove before it recruits any more
galley components to it's nefarious war on my sanity.