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, Read More

The autopilot had a minor failure again last night. Everything was going well and then there was a strange sound so we pulled the ram out. The Allen key we used had popped loose and the key way we had cut had worn with the constant back and forth movement of the ram. This, Read More

Well after the epoxy set and I tested out the motor, cleaned up the fitting and gears and reassembled the autopilot it was time to put it back to the test. Everything seemed to go well and we were motoring in some very calm seas which was a nice Intro for the autopilot which, Read More

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, Read More

Not much to report over the past 24 hours. The autopilot had continued to work well and everyone is catching up on sleep. I’m on the midnight to 3am shift now and it was a very penetrating cold last night. It felt as if the fog was actually inside the cockpit enclosure. Every surface, Read More

Another day and another 125 miles. The autopilot has been working very well with no complaints from the crew having our fifth crew member back on board. We had an average afternoon but the winds really started to drop off so I rigged up the pole about 6 pm to stop the sail from, Read More

So we did it, we managed to get the autopilot back together in such a manner that it worked well over the last 24 hours and we are cautiously optimistic we will be ok for the rest of the trip. There is a small electro magnet clutch on the Raymarine / Autohelm ram that, Read More

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, Read More

Well we made it (I hope). All the forecasts say we should be seeing some wind this afternoon and building for the next two days. I was a little skeptical when I went on shift this morning considering how calm it was again, however the swell had backed more to the west and we, Read More

Well we are truly in the North Pacific High now. For our noon to noon run we managed 117 miles which is pretty good considering we motored for 21/24 hours at 1500 RPM to save fuel. We had a couple hours of sailing and had the main out again which was nice to turn, Read More