Day 13 Autopilot Woes

Well it happened, our autopilot failed last night at 1:30 am.

I was on watch and everything was going well. We were sailing downwind with the Genoa poled out and some main doing 6-8 kts when the autopilot failed. I was not able to move the wheel at all so blew the Genoa sheet and got Jed up to help.

We had a pretty big mess on the foredeck when we were done as the pole had shaken itself loose and was flying around on its topping lift while the topping lift got wrapped up in the furled sail so we couldn’t drop the pole to put it back in the mast.

At this point I got everyone up and Jed and I wrestled the pole on the foredeck while Kevin and Ron unfurled and firmed the head sail thus freeing the topping lift.

Once we had the foredeck sorted I crawled into the Lazarette to remove the autopilot ram. Again after some swearing and cursing it came out.

I’ve decided to try and put off as many repairs until daylight. It takes so much focus to sail the boat at night by hand via the compass any distraction above or below decks can result in something else breaking.

When the day broke (4am ships time as we are still on Hawaii time) I took the autopilot apart one more time.

The main problem was that the Allen key we used to lock the gears had sheared which stopped the ram from going in and out. The secondary and more critical problem was that he motor had stopped operating.

When I got into the motor I found that one if the housings for the brushes had come loose. The brush housing had done a little damage to the windings but Ron and I thought it would be worth attempting a fix.

Since I had been up since midnight I took a nap and Ron got onto the motor repair.

By about lunch Ron had cleaned up all the windings, finished the soldering and we were ready to epoxy brush housing back in place.

We will let that cure for a couple hours and see if the motor is fixed. If it holds we will cut a new Allen key and put our much loved Autopilot back into service.

Fingers crossed.

Noon to noon run as 136 miles so we are keeping the wheels turning.