i’ll go towards Canaries/Lanzarote in early May sometime.  Just me, so there’s no need for too much blogging nonsense for over-frantic crew friends and family.   But Bill says Oh No you gotta do the Mojo blog! Well, okay. Bill is pretty cool and not the sort to be too fussed if a blog is late or missing.  

Fuel - I’ve actually cleaned the 50+ plastic 2-litre fuel cans and internally is where it matters.  Petrol doesn’t clear the black gunk at the bottom of a 10+ year old diesel jerrycans but bleach does!  Empty any diesel remaining, then pour in a fair bit of bleach, shake it about, then pour/funnel that into the next and so on.   You simply can’t get cleaner emissions than burning bleach, altho when full it’s mostly diesel, really.  I’m keeping most of the jerrycans in the spare loo as pic till time to fill them.  

Satphones.  I resubscribed for the two phones for a year, so I can call MRCC if needed (not needed yet, ever) or get forecasts which is nearly important, or upload blogs which isn’t too important, except for Bill.  I had a look at the Starlink stuff for Wifi at sea and it seems very fab, although I am kinda wary that I’d be indoors surfing the net or watching films too much.  More, anyway.  I’ll likely try get it next year, maybe.  

MRCC is Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Falmouth, and they organise marine rescues worldwide. Most countries run at least some sort of service like this, in case yerknow, a ship goes up the rocks, that stuff.  MRCC call is kinda Last Resort, cos they’ll try (say) divert a nearby ship to save lives.  Saving the boat, not so much if at all.    

Hull clean: Jay The Dive Guy on Ati says he’ll clean the hull. I want to book him late April.  

Enginerooms: I’ve spray-glued aluminium foil to wallpaper over the foam insulation in the starboard engineroom and used aluminium insulation tape to fix the edges.  This should (mainly) seal/stop the factory-fitted but friable material from falling apart with tiny bits which were always all over the place stopped with the new foil barrier.  Plus it improves the light in the engineroom, and looks quite superyachtish hurrah.   I should be able to do the port side before leaving.  

Doctor Diesel is aka Bob, another cruiser who adds to his boaty cruising fund by doing diesel engine repair and maintenance.  He’s gonna fit new belts and (some) engine mounts for Mojo.  I’m not sure when these were changed, if ever, and the service interval just can’t be 18 years or 2250/2261 hours on each engine since the boat was new.  So what the heck, new belts and keep some of the old ones as spares.  

Wes in Lanzarote re-lifed the rig in 2020, so it’s kinda like a new boat in that department.  Obviously I’ve given it some stick and wrecked a few things but with a new 2nd reef line it should be good to go.  

hum and dang engineroom temp oughta be ambient plus 10C and its ambient plus 20C, The 2 litre motors at 3000 rpm suck up 3000 lpm which is about 100 cu ft per min ... so it might need fans. yeah, ones that work though.  Bigger ones for lower inlet air temp, higher inlet density and better fuel efficiency.  Not mad critical tho.