A Report from Busy Brian Thompson on Bahrain Team Pindar

From Brian THompson this Morning“Conditions are rapidly warming as I climb NE’ward. I was working on some repair projects down below and realised that I was getting very overheated in my thick thermals. It’s even fine on deck in bare feet today. It is getting back to Bahrain weather! Now almost at the latitude of Buenos Aires and out of the Roaring Forties. The miles have passed very quickly since the Horn. When I was sailing in the Southern Ocean, the distances were so vast and the sea so empty that it was hard to measure your progress, now its easy, with Argentina and soon Uruguay and Brasil on the port side. I can tick off the cities, provinces, and countries along the way on the digital chart. Over half way to the next big meteorological feature, the SE trades which sit reliably just to the north of Rio. All the way from the Horn to these tradewinds, the South Atlantic can be a lottery and so far myself, Dee and Arnaud have been filling up our bingo cards very well. But there is a slow section tomorrow, where I need to struggle through a light airs transition zone to reach a new wind that is blowing from almost the opposite direction to the NW wind that I have now. Then a couple more days of steady sailing till the final transition near Rio to the tradewinds. But to have done two-thirds of this section on the same weather system is very fortunate and it has been relatively gentle conditions for the boat.”

“Last night had another interesting repair job before I could charge the batteries. The clutch problem that I had fixed two days before, reappeared, and it did not make sense that it would need readjusting so soon, so there had to be something else wrong. Sure enough, on taking it completely to pieces I saw that a screw in the clutch plate had worked loose and destroyed the clutch. So, over a few hours, I removed the hydraulic pump, then the clutch assembly, them remounted the pump. The pump won’t work anymore without the clutch, but it is only the back-up keel motor and so long as the electric keel pump keeps working, I will be OK. Or I will be hand pumping the keel like Bilou in second place! It was an interesting job as it was interspersed with sojourns on deck to reduce sail, as the wind increased steadily over the period from 20-35 knots. Now its back to 15-20 knots. Next major job after ensuring power is to get weather data and I was also working last night trying to get the Iridium Open Port working again. Whilst working on the iridium, I found a corroded plug on the long time non-functioning Fleet 77 satellite system and I am working on this now by crawling like a contortionist into a 12 inch high space at the very stern of the boat, to make new connections with crimps. If I can get at least one of these systems working it will really help me avoid the light wind areas in the South Atlantic and pick the correct course across the Doldrums, as well as sending images back.”