Day 12 – Repairs

Yesterday was a day of fixing systems for both crews. This feels a little bit like a right of passage in some ways. The first week was marked by the crews becoming accustomed to their environment, being challenged by the wind and waves and discovering their new normal. The second week has been marked by the crews needing to run repairs on some of their more major pieces of equipment. If these items cannot be fixed it won’t prevent the teams from making it to Barbados, but it will make it a lot more difficult for them.

The teams to have tested their kit sufficiently before departing so that any potential issues were ironed out before they set off, but the best preparation won’t help if there is a breakage of the equipment while underway, which does seem to be what has happened.

Ocean’s Elite called up a few days ago at night when their entire electrical system shut down because there was no longer any charge left in the batteries. See Day 11 mission update for a more comprehensive description of the system. This is unexpected. Initially we thought that this might have been because it has been somewhat overcast and the team had been using the big fan inside their cabin, to try and stay cool, all the way through the night. During the day we suggested that the team turn everything off and focus on trying to recover one battery. This started to work but the amount of energy going into the battery was still significantly less than we expected, even though it was overcast.

After a little bit of waiting and trying to be patient we asked the crew to start some more diagnosis. It turned out that one panel was significantly underperforming. Each panel is protected by a diode which stops power flowing from one panel into another, which could happen if one panel is in shade and the others are in bright sun. (You can see them in today’s image, they are the small black boxes to the right of the big white box). After having a rummage behind the electrical panel the crew found that the diode on the panel which wasn’t working properly was fried. Whether it was a failure in the component or corrosion exacerbated by moisture doesn’t really matter. The crew had done an excellent job in locating the issue. They do carry with them a spare diode just in case one breaks and so after a quick swap of components, they put the system back together and the power started flowing back into the battery. By the end of the day they were back on Starlink for an interview. Superb!

As for Rowing Stones their last day wasn’t short on drama either. Since the first few days of the trip they have been having a little bit of trouble with their watermaker. The watermaker or desalinator is an amazing piece of kit which pushes seawater through a membrane that is so fine that a molecule of salt it too big to pass through but a water molecule can get through. To achieve this feat of magic it used incredibly high pressure. Most of the unit is hydraulic but it does require water at a high pressure which is supplied by an electrical pump.

Initially it seemed that the hatch to the locker where the watermaker is stored was leaking and letting water in. That shouldn’t have been too much of a problem, as each locker is separate from all the other lockers, so while not ideal it is a limited problem. Especially as the watermaker parts in that locker are the hydraulic elements and so are unaffected by water. But the crew reported that the watermaker was failing to reach sufficient pressure to start freshwater production. This indicated a leak from the watermaker itself rather than from outside, but despite their best efforts the crew were unable to identify any leaks from the watermaker. A moment later and after pumping the water out of that locker, the watermaker started working fine.

Fast forward to yesterday and the crew were concerned again as the watermaker wasn’t reaching operational pressure again. After another check the crew still couldn’t find any leaks but noticed that if they cycled the pressure in the watermaker by depressurising and then pressurising that it started to work. Another potential issue is that it’s been pretty bouncy recently and if air gets into the watermaker that it will take time to process that before it is able to reach pressure again. Anyway for now the crew are happy that they’ve found a workaround which lets the watermaker work. They teams have strong weather for a few more days before it calms down which should reduce the amount of air getting into the system, and even if there is an issue with the watermaker that they’re unable to fix, they have a separate manual watermaker and sufficient bottled water in the hull of the boat to last the crew more than 2 weeks which gives us plenty of time to find a solution if needed.

Both teams continue to make excellent progress in these strong conditions.