A new message from Charlie onboard Musandam after crossing the Equator on 13 January 2009 at 12:08 UTC.“In one direction at least! We crossed the equator at 1208 UTC today 13 Jan. I think that we were all a bit tired – there was a bit of a delayed cheer but we were all happy to reach this milestone. It’s early in the trip, but it was good to get into the southern hemisphere and have that part of the trip done – from here on the days get longer and cooler which will be a relief.
We have done some more work on the generator and now have a sustainable fix that should see us round the world ok – we have take out the start battery and have a couple of flying leads that we can connect either to the main engine battery or the main system batteries to start the generator – one running we can take off the clips and she runs well – we are charging approximately twice per day for around an hour each time though this depends on the apparent wind speed we have – as the wind generator can be very effective, or not at all depending on how much wind we have.
Loik and I are not sleeping a lot, but when we do something seems to happen … Last night I finally got to sleep and woke up to find Thierry and hooch with a problem with the compass the heading had drifted around 30 degrees, so I went into the back of the boat to see if there were any connection problems, or to see if anything could have effected the compass … Nothing found, so whilst scratching my head a bit I picked up a safety waist bag that we all have from the cockpit floor – and the compass corrected. Problem solved – the safety waist bag contains a man overboard beacon – to activate the beacon you remove it’s jacket which trips a magnetic switch … the magnet was right above the compass which is mounted below the cockpit floor … I just wish all these things were as easily solved.