Ship’s Journal from Mallorca to Fiji

Update 22/02/25 17:30 GMT-4 Grand Case St Martin.

There are good ways to have bad luck. 

We were refreshed and ready for action when we came back from Anguilla two days ago. Our genoa was repaired and waiting for us in the sail loft. Slightly frustrated we found out that our Spinnaker Halyard (which we use for the Code Zero) was not ready yet. That took until last night. Without going too much into detail, raising the genoa wasn’t a straightforward exercise so we were very happy when that was done yesterday. 

Halfway through the Atlantic we started to get an overheating alarm on our battery chargers. Speaking to the Palma tech team, based on my findings, we suspected it was a false alarm. However it’s nicer to be sure. Since our arrival I have been trying to get a technician to come on board. Last night they messaged us that he could come this morning.

Our plan for the day: rig the halyard (facing my biggest irrational fear of heights) , get the technician to do his job, head over to Marigot to fuel and check out, and sail into the setting sun to Panama!

 Rigging the halyard went well. But then we had bad luck in the best way possible. The technician had made adjustments to the charge output of the chargers, lowering their temperature. To test everything, we were running the generator. The generator had chosen to fail, of all moments, while the technician was on board. A small fragile sensor made our main power source fail entirely. With all technical service providers closing at noon on Saturdays, we were so lucky that the technician could simply call the boss who brought us the sensor. 

The repair and further testing took a few hours more. With the fuel dock, laundry and customs office closing at 5pm we decided to do what we can already do today. We’re extremely keen to move on but are forced to stay one more night. Tomorrow morning we fuel up and hoist our sails to go further west!