4/12/12

Noon Position: 41 54' S, 100 01' E, SOG 6, COG 100, Day's Run 150nm,
Week's Run 831. We're finally back into the triple digits of longitude
- now only 140 degrees or so to go. This is the first week in the
Indian with an average of under 5kts, which is a little bit
disappointing, but understandable. In my cleaning and sorting down the
last few days I had to throw out all but two of my cans of fruit - all
the rest were holed and leaking. The canned fruit bin, exorcised of the
foul black ferment of its contents, has now become the container for my
remaining UHT milk. I lost one can of fruit salad in the first month of
the trip and didn't catch it until the rest of the cans had started
rusting, so the inevitable processes of time led me to this state. It's
a little disappointing, I'd only eaten about 4 cans since I'd been
saving the rest until I ate through my fresh fruit, but that's what I
get for not sanding and greasing or painting all the rusty fruit back in
the pacific. I also traced the source of the water that seems to be
constantly present in the bilge - I had though it was the packing gland
on the prop shaft, which I know leaks more than it should, but
discovered yesterday that the packing gland on the rudder was in fact
leaking. When the boat really starts trucking the stern wave gets
pushed up the prop shaft and through the packing gland, leaving me
pumping the bilge once or twice a day when I'm sailing hard.
Frustrating, because I had this problem back in California before I left
and I thought I'd fixed it by replacing the packing and tightening
everything up - apparently not. I'll have to go laz-diving with a
wrench to see if I can crank it down any more and staunch the leak.