Asunto
Our life afloat on a boat
Sailing Trips
Sailing, sailing, sailing That’s why we live the life we do, so that we can untie the lines and explore the world in our own backyard. From Sept 2015-October 2016 we sailed with a 2 year old and a baby from Vancouver to Mexico, across to Hawaii, across to Alaska and then down, Read More
What an exciting morning. We finally have seen landfall. Kevin thinks he saw the mountains for about 10 minutes this morning from about 55 miles out. He is the only one who saw them and it has been foggy and cloudy on the horizon but we know we are close and only getting closer.
As of yesterday at about noon it started to look as if we might make it to Sitka on Sunday June 26 instead of the earlier anticipated 27th. I decided to maintain an average speed over 6 kts which meant we would have run the engine and motor sail even if we were sailing at 5 kts.
Although motor sailing when there is a moderate breeze out is a pain it paid off as we’ll arrive it Sitka this afternoon!
When I got on shift at 6 am, Kevin had been sailing for 2 hours with the motor on and the wind kept building. I decided to shake out the reefed headsail and try to claw back some miles. I was able to hand steer my two hours and rack up 15.2 miles.
Jed came on after me and clocked 16 miles, which Ron then followed up with another 16 mile run, giving us 171 miles for the 24 hour run. What a great time to have a huge day as we are now only 20 miles from Sitka at noon on the 26th.
I tried all day to get the DC motor of the autopilot working properly to no avail.
The motor works well when it is running, but it does not start every time. We though initially that the brushes were bad and I tried to clean them up, however the more I play with the brushes, the less confident I am that they are the real problem.
Ron and I tried metering the different windings but we both agree that the scale on the meter is just not accurate for what we are doing. We didn’t see any obvious shorts, but then again I am not 100% sure what I should be looking for. I’m just really glad we have gotten this far and have put a good 1000 miles on a number of field repairs and I can’t complain about that.
The wind has flipped around and is blowing from the south. This change was forecasted and should allow us to drive straight into Sitka on a beam reach. I just hope it holds until we arrive.
Our noon to noon run was at 153 miles which is pretty respectable considering we don’t have the full use of the main. We have been trying to use a little of the main which equates to about a double reef, but only to really balance the boat, we are not getting that many more miles because of it.
The new autopilot fix worked great, kind of….
My fix with the Delrin worked really well. The linear drive is directly coupled to the drive pull and there is very little slop in the system, unfortunately you need an electric motor to run the system and that is what failed last night.
Everything was great and the the DC motor crapped out. Since it was almost evening we decided we would just hand steer the rest of the night and take a better look in the morning.
The weather is still overcast but we did have a couple of spots of blue sky today. The fog seems to have lifted and we are seeing some more steady wind.
The forecast is calling for 10-20 kts for our whole trip into Sitka which will be great and we are looking to make landfall on June 27.
Our noon to noon run was 141 and we are starting to get tunnel vision as we near the end of the trip
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