Thursday, June 21

A small interruption

They say that your first passage, something inevitably goes wrong.  Well for us it was 2 things.  We had to make a detour to Charleston, South Carolina.  We arrived at 3:30 am this morning.
We left St. Augustine fuel dock and passed under the Bridge of Lions at 4:30 pm Tuesday June 19th.  We headed out to sea to find the Gulf Stream.  About 20 miles off shore, we were headed north to Rhode Island.  Yeah!  The seas were rough and the winds were about 15-20 knots.  We were better prepared this time by taking our sea sickness medicine ahead of time.  The winds were from the North East, which wasn't perfect, but we knew they would be changing by morning to a more favorable direction.
The first item to go was the autopilot.  It shut itself off around 11 pm, sounding an alarm.  Autopilot is like cruise control in your car.  It drives the boat for you, on the course you set to your destination.  It is truly a wonderful electronic to have on board.  And when it doesn't work, that means you have to steer the boat 100% of the time.  This is hard to do for 6 days straight, 24/7!
Then at about 2:30 in the morning, the outhaul snapped in half.  The outhaul is the line that keeps the main sail tight in the boom.  This was  a brand new line we had made before we left.  Seems the guy from the store sold Craig the wrong line. The learning curve is sometimes pretty steep!
So, here we are in beautiful Charleston fixing the boat.  We called a rigger (line specialist) to make us a new outhaul with the correct type of line.  We are waiting for the autopilot repair guy to come out and take a look to see what's wrong.  In the meantime, we gave the boat a bath, Craig fixed our steaming light and also repaired the wind vane at the top of the mast.  We'll let you know when we are ready to head out again.

Guess where Craig is taking this picture from?

2 comments:

  1. I guess Craig isn't afraid of heights! Yikes, this is the equivalent of hanging Christmas lights on the 3rd story of your house. Good news on your detour is that it's to BEAUTIFUL Charleston... Fun! Miss you all terribly! We're all just trying to keep cool in the Big D! -Love - The Frigs

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  2. Bummer!!! Too bad the autopilot couldn't go out at 2:30 PM!! Looking forwward to hearing more about your trip! Johnny Hea

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