The alarm went off at 3:00 this morning, letting me know it was time to fire up the generator to warm some water for a shower. It’s a good feeling to step up to the control panel, confident the generator will start immediately and continue running until told otherwise. The Mayport area was pretty foggy, with about ¼-mile visibility, but I weighed anchor anyway. I was pretty sure that there would not be many recreational idiots running around at that hour and the commercial guys were doing a good job of informing every one of their activities via security calls on channel 13. I waited for an inbound car carrier to clear, then motored out through the jetties.
The troublesome autopilot is performing as poorly as it ever has, refusing to do its duty about 90% of the time. It was previously unreliable, but more often than not, seemed inclined to work more than half the time. Anyway, I have had enough. I opened the remote the other day (it is much more than a mere remote and appears to contain about ½ the system’s “brains”) and found it to have a great deal of gunk and corrosion on its circuit board, microchips, etc. I cleaned it up as best I could with contact cleaner achieving nothing other than the complete disabling of the LCD display. It sill worked, I just couldn’t read the display. Yesterday, I spent a good deal of time trying to locate a replacement without any luck. Simrad no longer manufactures my particular system and not even the over-stock and surplus stores seemed to have any in stock. Rather than mess around any longer with trying to make an obsolete system work, I decided to just bite the bullet and order a new one. Thankfully my trackline takes me close enough to shore to maintain a good cellular connection, so I was able to go online and figure out what I wanted, and then call Defender to order the system. Sunday, the very helpful lady who helped me out, went way out of her way to get me what I needed. The kit I wanted was backordered, but she made a number of calls to other dealers, struck a few deals on the side, and was able to piece together all the components for me. She has promised to monitor the receiving and shipping of my order and assures me that my stuff will arrive in Port Canaveral by Friday. The world needs more people like Sunday, though they don’t necessarily need to be named Sunday.
It looks like I’ll be hand steering the remaining 120 or so miles to Port Canaveral. There is virtually no wind at the moment, so I am motoring until some builds. Alana needs to average 4.8 knots if I am to get to the marina by the slack water predicted for noon tomorrow, so I can’t afford to sit around and wait on the wind.
The troublesome autopilot is performing as poorly as it ever has, refusing to do its duty about 90% of the time. It was previously unreliable, but more often than not, seemed inclined to work more than half the time. Anyway, I have had enough. I opened the remote the other day (it is much more than a mere remote and appears to contain about ½ the system’s “brains”) and found it to have a great deal of gunk and corrosion on its circuit board, microchips, etc. I cleaned it up as best I could with contact cleaner achieving nothing other than the complete disabling of the LCD display. It sill worked, I just couldn’t read the display. Yesterday, I spent a good deal of time trying to locate a replacement without any luck. Simrad no longer manufactures my particular system and not even the over-stock and surplus stores seemed to have any in stock. Rather than mess around any longer with trying to make an obsolete system work, I decided to just bite the bullet and order a new one. Thankfully my trackline takes me close enough to shore to maintain a good cellular connection, so I was able to go online and figure out what I wanted, and then call Defender to order the system. Sunday, the very helpful lady who helped me out, went way out of her way to get me what I needed. The kit I wanted was backordered, but she made a number of calls to other dealers, struck a few deals on the side, and was able to piece together all the components for me. She has promised to monitor the receiving and shipping of my order and assures me that my stuff will arrive in Port Canaveral by Friday. The world needs more people like Sunday, though they don’t necessarily need to be named Sunday.
It looks like I’ll be hand steering the remaining 120 or so miles to Port Canaveral. There is virtually no wind at the moment, so I am motoring until some builds. Alana needs to average 4.8 knots if I am to get to the marina by the slack water predicted for noon tomorrow, so I can’t afford to sit around and wait on the wind.
May you have a perfect sailing day today.
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