Captain's Log - Tuesday, 1 September 2009

Tuesday, 1 September
The run from Prins Christian Sund, Greenland, to the Straight of Belle Isle,Canada, would be our longest open-water leg, 600 nautical miles at 218°. Itshould take four days.
We spent Monday night tied up in Augpilagtoq, a small village deep in PrinsChristian Sund, the 50-mile sound that cuts across the south end ofGreenland just above Cape Farewell. Our projects in Augpilagtoq included:provisioning; the aft sump pump that puts gray water from galley and afthead overboard was not working; the starboard alternator was apparently notworking; and the toilet in the forward head was sticking when pumped.

We provisioned at a store that was surprisingly well-stocked for a community of 150 people. The prices well-compensated the owner; we should have boughta lot more in Reykjavik. This made me wonder where the people, allapparently Inuit, got their money. There was a fish processing plant, but itlooked dilapidated and closed. The men did a little fishing and sealhunting. Perhaps the skins had cash value. I surmised that the Danishgovernment was giving them welfare money.

This has been an unlucky-with-pumps trip. When we could not fix thebrand-new aft sump pump, we replaced it with the new fresh water pump whoseautomatic pressure switch we had burned up earlier. (For the purpose ofemptying the aft sump we do not need the pressure switch.) We had previouslyused this pump to transfer fuel from a storage tank to a working tank whenwe could not get the fuel transfer pump to work.

We have two alternators on the main engine, the port one for the starting battery and the starboard one for the house batteries (the batteries thatsupply electricity throughout the boat). The starboard alternator hadstopped charging the house batteries. We could see no obvious problem (eg,loose wire). Fortunately, we have a switch which connects the housebatteries and the starting battery. Thus the "work-around" would be to openthis switch when the main engine was running so the port alternator couldcharge both sets of batteries. We would need to remember to close the switchwhen the main engine was not running so as not to drain the starting batteryas we ran off the house batteries. The autopilot has always been a big userof electricity. All of the new electronics ( two GPS units, an AIS unit, anda PC with electronic charting) added significantly to the load.

As for the forward head sticking, Trond disassembled and greased itthoroughly.
We departed Agpilagtoq after lunch. We inspected, but did not climb aboard,a large iceberg just outside the harbor that had a massive hole rightthrough it. It looked like a bridge that had broken loose from its mooringsand was floating serenely along.

It took about 3 hours to motor down the remainder of Prins Christian Sund.The mountains on either side were not quite so dramatic as the 1800 meterones we had passed earlier, but they were still quite beautiful and impressive. One interesting characteristic that Trond pointed out is that the taller mountains had tops that were quite jagged while the parts below 600 meters were quite rounded. The contrast was striking and added to thebeauty and allure. The geologic reason for this is that the tops were nevercovered with a glacier. The same phenomenon exists in Norway.

We exited Prins Christian Sund around 5 pm, still under motor power. Thesun was shinning brightly, the wind was from the southwest at 20 knots, andthere was still some ice about. Our course was too close to the wind tosail, so we motored on for another two hours. By then, the wind hadfreshened to 25 knots, but had veered (shifted clockwise) sufficiently norththat we were able to turn the motor off and begin sailing on a starboardtack (wind on the starboard side of the boat).

For the next 15 hours we had a delightful close reach (wind about 60° offour direction of travel). The main sail was partly furled, and the foresailwas our primary staysail. *Maryam* has two forestays (lines that run fromthe forward deck to the mast) from which sails can be flown. The headstay runs from the bow to the top of the mast. The inner forestay is attached tothe deck 10 feet aft of the bow and to the mast about 2/3ds of the way up.Headsails are flown from the headstay, and staysails are flown from theinner forestay. *Maryam's* normal headsail is a Genoa sail, a sail that islarger than the triangle formed by the headstay, the mast and the deck. Thisis furled around the headstay with a roller furling system that can be operated from the cockpit. Staysails are hanked on the inner forestay. This means they must be raised and lowered with a halyard in the traditional manner. We use stay sails in stronger winds when we want the wind force centered around the mast. We were using the primary staysail for this leg.
By mid-day on Wednesday the wind had backed (moved counter-clockwise) south such that we could no longer sail our intended course of 218°. We elected to continue sailing while altering our course to 180°. By mid-afternoon thewind had dropped to 10 knots. We lowered the staysail and unfurled the Genoa. The wind continued to back and in the late afternoon we tacked, thatis we turned the boat so that the wind came across the other side, in thiscase the port side. By midnight it was getting uncomfortable, and with thewind coming from precisely the direction we wanted to go, we were not making much progress toward our destination.