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 on for the first time since Sept 2015 when we were in San Francisco, but I had to put on my full foul weather gear, two sweaters and a toque as well!

But what you really want to hear about is the autopilot.

As you recall from our adventures from Mexico to Hawaii in April we lost the autopilot 1200 miles out of Oahu and had to hand steer the rest of the way.

What happened to the autopilot last time is that the plastic gears that operate the electro magnetic clutch had sheared and would not engage the drive.

When we were home and Bowen was born I was able to get a rebuild kit and rebuilt the autopilot ram. I thought everything was working well and put it back in the boat.

There was slightly more noise with the rebuilt ram but I chaulked that up to now having metal and brass gears compared to the old plastic ones.

Well it turns out I was wrong on that score as the new brass gears stripped out last night around midnight and we had to take the autopilot out of commission as Ron steered from 1-3, I took over from 3-5:30 and Jed steered from 5:30-7:30 when I got my tools together and pulled the ram out.

While Ron and I assessed the damage and thought about repairs, Jed and Kevin hand steered all morning and we had Kristine on the phone to Raymarine (what a waste of carbon that company is, maybe Kristine will add a note about that later*) and looking for replacement parts.

We think we have an idea for an unobtrusive fix and will try to get that installed this afternoon.

Stay tuned.

Oh btw 140 miles noon to noon under sail so we are officially out of the North Pacific high!

*I was on hold for 57 minutes. The man who answered the phone was extremely rude- repeating he was sitting at a desk and the unit was 24 years old and there could be any number of parts that need replacement and what was he supposed to do from behind desk? I have been talking with support from Maretron and Sparcraft, both who tried to help from afar. So not impressed with Raymarine

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 were able to motor sail at around 11am.

Jed and I put the fuel from the Jerry cans into the main tanks so we will be ready to go if the wind does pick up. Ron gave me a little scare when half way through the filling he said the starboard side level sender stopped working.

“What now?” I thought to myself – but it was just a miscommunication and we were up and running again.

Noon to noon run was 113 miles. If this is truly the end of the high, we essentially motored through it in three days and had a couple patches where we could sail at 3-4 kts. All in all I am glad with our route choice and hope we have some downwind sailing in the next 24 hours.

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 the engine off.

It looks as if most of our fruit has come to an end. We still have some apples and oranges, but the softer mangos and bananas will see the wild blue yonder later on.

We had a nice treat before dinner as a half dozen Dahl porpoises came by and swam in the bow wake as we motored on.

When I came on shift this morning at 0600 the water was so calm you could have dropped the dinghy in the water and gone water skiing! There was not a ripple to be seen.