For the first time in almost 3,000 miles of uphill sailing we have waves from just one direction! Even though these are 3 to 8 feet (0.9 to 2.4m), it feels like we are cruising on a glass calm ocean. We like this better!

We have started using our flying bridge salt water ballast tanks to reduce roll period and increase inertia. Normally this would not be required as our big booms help in this regard when they are positioned outboard. However, they have been snugged up in an aft position to reduce their windage. Filling the fly bridge ballast tanks really helped our comfort level. Have to remember to use these again.

With three days behind us there are just 235 nautical miles to go. We’re due south of Kalae point, the southern extremity of Hawaii, so we’ve put quite a few miles of easting into the bank. Our course is now 355 true, winds are in the 14-knot range from the northeast. A soft beating angle.

We had some excitement this morning in the engine room. Our diesel heater was not firing, and both of us badly needed a shower. It was a question of dealing with the heater, or taking an ambient water temperature bath. Even though we’re still deep in the tropics at 16 north latitude, we like hot showers. A quick check showed no fuel. Further investigation indicated a 20 PSI vacuum on the pre-filter which the heater shares with the starboard engine. The engine can deal with this, but not the heater transfer pump.

So, a quick change of filters was in order. We stopped the starboard engine, put the boat on a course at minimum revs into the waves (hove to, in effect), and then proceeded to deal with the filter.

The trick here is not the filter change. There is good access, and we can even sit on the genset sound shield. What we want to avoid is spilling or splashing any diesel in the engine room. Even a few drops will stink for a long time. Notice the oil absorbing pad below the filter. It is there to catch the inevitable drips.

The dirty filter itself goes into a Zip-Loc bag, which then is tossed into the engine room trash bucket. The bucket has a heavy plastic liner.

These filters sit below the top of the day tank, so before starting this process we filled the day tank. The valves each side of the filter were then closed. This prevents the day tank from overflowing the top of the filter. The engine side valve closure eliminates the possibility of getting air into the feed lines.

Once the filter is back together, the valve to the day tank is opened. The air bleed screw on top of the filter housing is cracked, and the top of the filter automatically has air displaced by fuel coming from the day tank. With air bled, the valve to the engine and heater are opened.

This sounds complicated, but the entire process takes less than five minutes. The other filter needs to be changed as well, but we’ll wait on this until we are at anchor, as it has a lot less vacuum.

These are the original filters from launching, with 600 engine hours on them. So, they’ve lasted longer than we expected. However, in the future, we’ll change them at a 10 to 12 PSI vacuum reading, so we don’t have to do this at sea.

With both of us well rested and clean, the thought naturally turns to (amongst other things) the galley. Sitting in the fridge are a large inventory of New Zealand apples. It would be a shame to give these up to the agricultural inspector, so we’ve started to bake a pie. Betty Crocker is open on the galley counter as this is being written…

…We’re back from a short time out to bake the pie and hook up the aft deck salt water pump to the watermaker (a lot easier than replacing the pump). The watermaker is now happily filling our tanks and the crew of Wind Horse eagerly await the cooling cycle.

The real question will be the period of time over which this pie is consumed. It is an immutable law of physics that the quality of a freshly baked pie is inversely proportional to the square of the time it has been cooling. In other words, some of believe it is best to consume the entire pie while it is still warm. But that is not a universally held belief on this vessel, so the prospect of strife and tension lies in our immediate future.

Meanwhile, we’re starting to think about the weather patterns between Hawaii and California. Towards this end, we’ve begun to download faxes from NMC in Point Reyes, California. There will be more data in these about the Pacific High and its oscillations – with which we now need to become familiar. More on this in a few days.