We set out this morning in a thick fog, but needed to do so in order to cross the breakwater’s bar at high tide. When we arrived here it was low tide and to be honest I’m not sure now how we got in the first time without hitting bottom. Once outside the breakwater we pointed the bow towards Baja and settled in. Lowe laid down and took a monumental nap, Ouest and Ali colored pictures, and I stared into the fog, freezing my butt off, waiting for the sun to burn it off which it took it’s own sweet time doing.

Calm, calm, calm. Another glassy day of motoring with the mainsail up just for good looks.

The belt for the engine driven refrigeration broke again. I made up a new mount for the compressor and knew when I put the belt on that it was a little tight. I should have known better than to leave it on that way, so now I’ll have to crawl down into a steaming hot engine compartment and put on a slightly bigger belt, which we just happen to have aboard. Shouldn’t be a big deal.

After all day without any issues Ouest started saying, “Sick, sick,” right as it was time for bed. She’d had medicine and we thought she was doing fine but she was telling us otherwise. So we brought her outside for a while. We watched the sun go down, and saw the green flash for the first time ever. A split second after the sun disappeared beneath the horizon what looked like a green nav light flashed on and just as quickly back off. I really thought the whole green flash was just in people’s imagination until now.

Anyway, after some fresh air we went inside and I had her lay on me on the couch for a while. Then when she was just about to drift off to sleep I moved her onto the couch. She laid there for a minute and then, bleh, projectile vomiting. We’ve got one seriously seasick prone little girl on our hands. Sea conditions have been mild to say the least, but that doesn’t seem to matter one bit to Ouest.

While Ali went about cleaning up inside I took Ouest and sat outside again. This time looking at stars. When Ali finished she came out and told me it smelled like the engine was hot. I went inside and looked at the gauges. Sure enough, the water temp was up twenty degrees and the oil pressure was up a bit as well. Crap. I backed the engine off to an idle and climbed into the compartment to have a look. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I spent ten minutes going over the engine and couldn’t find a thing wrong.

I got back out with my flashlight in hand and noticed smoke up front in the kitchen. Then I smelled it and thought we had a fire. I quickly traced it to the electrical panel, saw that the DC Amps gauge had melted and was falling off. I opened it up and found wires melting. About then the DC power went out completely. The main culprit appeared to be the running lights switch. The same running lights Ouest and I had been working on the other day. Also melted was the main DC power switch. I disconnected the running lights, replaced the wire for the power, and got us lights again. During this little episode Ali had switched on the VHF and gotten a call from another sailboat that had been behind us most of the day. He gave her a hard time for not showing running lights. Thanks man.

Once we had that situation under control I looked at the engine gauges again and saw that they had returned to normal. The high readings must have just been caused by the wiring that had been melting while I thought the problem was in the engine.

We’re getting more and more concerned with Ouest’s seasickness. There doesn’t seem to be a solution to it. She spent twelve hours today doing just fine and then all of the sudden she was sick. She’s such a trooper too that it just makes me feel terrible. Tonight as we were standing over a bucket covered in puke she kept saying, “Sorry, Papa.” Broke my heart.

What a night. And it’s only eleven o’clock.