Autopilot Update

Well, it wasn’t fixed and now we have a whole lot of weird going on.

The Mystery Drive in the old Autopilot system has been identified as a Whitlock Mamba 24V drive, so that is good and thanks to my best friend Andrew for tracking down information for me.

The Furuno 511 Navpilot, the Brain in the new system is convinced that the Mamba is Overloaded and that my circuitry is a mess. The circuit I need to check is two wires. The Overloaded means the clutch circuit is reading more than five Amps of current, the Mamba is rated for three so I don’t see where that is happening.

We plugged the Mamba back in to the old Autohelm 300 and it happily drove the boat in all sort of wild circles as is its wont. The point is the Mamba drive easily engaged the clutch for the old system and turned the wheel.

The new AP bring doesn’t even seem to check with the Mamba drive, it instantly replies that the circuit is overloaded and that we are done here. I’m still looking for more information on this; any Autopilot geniuses out there by all means speak up in the comments, I will get them sent to me.

In the meantime, life goes on.

The Night Watch

Night gathers and now my watch beginsI am the watcher on the walls and the horn that wakes the sleepersI pledge my honor to the night’s watch, for this night and for all the nights to come.

OK, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic. But I’ve been a fan of George R.R. Martin since long before HBO decided to do a T.V. show. But night watch is a lot of work these days.

Yesterday afternoon with the autopilot newly fixed we all sat around in the cockpit, reveling in the idea of a cut back watch schedule and a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed. Shortly before dinner the autopilot disabused us of these happy, sleepy thoughts and we went back tot he same routine.

Four Red Lines

When hand steering during the day concentration is needed. You do want to stay pretty close to the course, and it is easy to get distracted looking around especially if we are visited by dolphins or birds. Your watch mate is usually awake though and others are around. You’ve got waves that come up and push the boat around to deal with and you need to work to keep the boat straight.

Night is a bit different.

When we left the Galapagos the moon was starting to wane from full, now it is a new moon. In other wordsno moon. And there have been clouds in the evenings too, occluding some of the starlight. Since you can barely see your hand in front of your face there is not much to see but stars, phosphorescence in the water, and the instruments.

When driving though your world collapses down to four red lines.

All of them are on the compass which is lit with a soft red in the evening to preserve your night vision. The lines are the line representing your course, the two lines that are five degrees on either side of it. The last line is the the needle that tells you what the compass is actually reading.

Your job is to keep the needle on the course, or at least as close to the lines on either side of your course as you can. The wind pushes you. More importantly the waves push you.

Unlike the day time you absolutely can not see the waves. There isn’t the light, and even strong moonlight isn’t enough to really tip you off. You must sail by feel.

There are right and wrong ways to ride the ways. Wrong, and you shoot they boat way off course, roll it violently, slow the boat down or all of the above. If you do it right you can keep the boat on course, turn the force of a wave into a surf down the wave to speed you up, and you keep the boat moving fast.

Again, this is by feel, your only guide in the pitch dark are the four lines and what you feel of the motion of the boat as the stern lifts and the bow swings and the waves take hold. Right now the waves are running around 3 meters, or 8-10 feet. Big but not huge. And in the Pacific they tend to be longer waves not steep and choppy so they are a little harder to work with.

Your watch is either three of six hours. You trade off driving with your partner, on a three hour watch you will general drive for an hour, rest for an hour, drive for half and hour, rest for half an hour. You can drive for half the watch if you want to, but 90 minutes makes you a lot more tired than 60 and you need more time to recover.

Light guide us, for the night is dark and full of freighters

Actually that’s not so true. I assume there is shipping out there, we just haven’t seen any of it. The last light we saw in the distance was a week ago, a few days back we saw a brief AIS signal from another boat. Other than that we haven’t laid eyes on another boat the whole time we’ve been out. We should be passing one of our fleet in the next 12-18 hours, maybe we’ll see them.

Keeping WATCH is important, but there isn’t so much to hit out here. When you are driving and all you can see is four red lines you can’t see much outside of the boat when you look up. We run the radar, but we’ve not seem a contact this whole trip. With a new moon and clouds it is so dark that I wouldn’t see an unlit 800 foot tanker until I almost hit it, but fortunately all the boats are lit up. That is what you look for out there the lights.

Watching is a big part of night watch usually, but right now hand steering is really the big part.