Day 9 -Fog and another broken autopilot!

What a change! Yesterday we were filling out fuel tanks in the fun with no shirts while motoring along at 5 kts on flat calm seas and today we are inundated with a thick fog, 20 kts of breeze and a broken autopilot.

That’s right folks, not only have I had to put pants on for the first time since Sept 2015 when we were in San Francisco, but I had to put on my full foul weather gear, two sweaters and a toque as well!

But what you really want to hear about is the autopilot.

As you recall from our adventures from Mexico to Hawaii in April we lost the autopilot 1200 miles out of Oahu and had to hand steer the rest of the way.

What happened to the autopilot last time is that the plastic gears that operate the electro magnetic clutch had sheared and would not engage the drive.

When we were home and Bowen was born I was able to get a rebuild kit and rebuilt the autopilot ram. I thought everything was working well and put it back in the boat.

There was slightly more noise with the rebuilt ram but I chaulked that up to now having metal and brass gears compared to the old plastic ones.

Well it turns out I was wrong on that score as the new brass gears stripped out last night around midnight and we had to take the autopilot out of commission as Ron steered from 1-3, I took over from 3-5:30 and Jed steered from 5:30-7:30 when I got my tools together and pulled the ram out.

While Ron and I assessed the damage and thought about repairs, Jed and Kevin hand steered all morning and we had Kristine on the phone to Raymarine (what a waste of carbon that company is, maybe Kristine will add a note about that later*) and looking for replacement parts.

We think we have an idea for an unobtrusive fix and will try to get that installed this afternoon.

Stay tuned.

Oh btw 140 miles noon to noon under sail so we are officially out of the North Pacific high!

*I was on hold for 57 minutes. The man who answered the phone was extremely rude- repeating he was sitting at a desk and the unit was 24 years old and there could be any number of parts that need replacement and what was he supposed to do from behind desk? I have been talking with support from Maretron and Sparcraft, both who tried to help from afar. So not impressed with Raymarine