Captain Scott ~ Monday, October 15th, 2007

We have an expanding list of boat projects that we have spent the last several days working on. We broke a jib sheet coming in. On any real jib it's an easy exchange but on this sail the clew is unreachable. We replaced the sheet using a bosuns chair. We can’t calibrate the high pressure on the 110 freezer and have given up. And our secondary bilge pump needs parts that we aren’t going to get. When Jeff washed out the bilge replacing the watermaker membranes back in Jordan, we found some fresh oil mixed in. This led to a leaking seal on the gen set. The rear seal was replaced in Turkey and the new leak is in the front seal. As we have no way of fixing it, the generator gets diapers for the near term. The alternator bracket on the main engine has always been a problem. Mark Jones found all 3 attachments to the alternator fractured and got this fixed last year. Now the 2 bolts that hold the other end to the engine broke. Dave has spent 2 days drilling out the old bolts, finding new ones the exact size, taping and solving the problem.He is really happy when presented with such a challenge and I am even happier to have him. We had tea and then dinner with Roy Facey who is a mysterious, well connected Englishman. He gave us up to date pirate info. 2years ago an American was boarded by a pirate. The American blew him away with his shotgun and became a local hero. Pirates don’t have civil rights here--or Yemen has few attorneys. We will have a 48 hour danger area that will start on the 2nd day out of Aden. We hope to depart tomorrow AM