The other day I wanted to start the genset to recharge the batteries a bit more. I started the genset and the engine control board shut it down immediately. Fault code 45 no sensing of speed. As it was night i used the PRT engine to recharge the batteries.

A 4-letter word escaped my mouth.

Next morning, after doing the cumbersome removal of the genset enclosures, I found the route cause immediately. A bearing of the rotor wore out.

Shit happens!

Thierry, who I know from DHL Papete, send me instantly the email and phone number of DHL Tarawa, Kiribatis. Asking by email if I can have something shipped to their office, remains unanswered since 3 days.

Also unanswered for the same time is a mail with some technical and parts ordering question to the biggest Onan dealer in Australia. Onan service…

The main problem is the water maker, which requires the genset for power supply. Thus, we have to sail without water maker.

If we have good winds we reach Tarawa in 10 days with day distance of only 120 NM in average. If we consider 20 days due to days with no wind in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, the doldrums.

We will fill the water tank and 2 jerry cans with water we have 600 l fresh water or 30 l of fresh water for the 2 of us per day.

1 l of freshwater is enough for a shower per person, thus 40 l of freshwater for showering. Sometimes we will also take a seawater shower on our way.

For drinking every day we consider 2 l per person plus a pot of tea an coffee. Also bit less than 6 l per day, I consider 120 l for drinking for 20 days

As washing the dishes will be done with seawater, we will have 440 l for cooking and baking, which means 22 l per day for 2 persons. This is enough in the case our sail takes twice as long as normal.

As an additional safety margin we still have about 50 l emergency bottled water on board. This is not counted for daily usage.

Tomorrow we’ll take the tender and go over to the resort at the beach. It’s said that sailboats will get water there. We will need to shuttle several times until the tank is full.

Today some other shit happened. I don’t know why, but twice did the breaker for the solar panel above the davits opened. The current flowing through the breaker is only below 31 A. However the one connector’s nut was not properly tightend up. Did this cause the heating up of cable?

After tightening the nut properly the temperature of the cable went down and the breaker did not open again for the rest of the day. Let’s see what will be the situation tomorrow.

We also went ashore to check the outbound clearness clearances situation with customs and the harbor master. Customs clearances seems to be ok, but I gave up the idea of docking briefly at the pier. It’s very tricky to get MaRe’s fenders in the same position with the very big, wall attached fenders for the commercial ships docking there normally. Thus, we will take the dinghy on Monday morning to make outbound clearance.

Routing to Tarawa is ready. Because we have to consider that we also can get northerly winds I placed an offset WPT 100 NM east of the SW corner of the Tarawa atoll.

To this SW corner WPT I also drew a line from the E corner of Espritus Santos island. This line is my “red” line, which we will not cross towards west. If needed we tack and sail a course with an easterly component.

Let’s see what comes up!