So here is the story on the autopilot in Mark's own words:
Big Problem Auto Pilot dies, we hand steer 2,300 nms
Tue Mar 30 2021
Suddenly the Auto Pilot turned off in the high winds and steep, short, rough seas causing the back of the boat to come through the wind and we gybed-all-standing, snapping the gybe preventer and allowing the boom to fly across the boat till it exploded a pully block off the mainsheets and ripping the US$1,600 main traveller apart destroying the rim that goes under the track with its brand new ball bearings now running across the deck and bouncing overboard like rats off a doomed ship.
The Auto Pilot would not come back on again but for 30 seconds at a time.
We were hand steering with 2,300 nautical miles in front of the two of us and a destroyed mess on deck. It was 1 am. Sunday morning.
I have some spare scavenged 16 mm Dyneema line Wayne gave me years ago stashed in the lazarette. I’d shown Marjorie and said it could lift the weight of the whole boat. Its easy to make a new main traveller.
3 hour watches hand steering (I said we would go to 4 hours steering within a few days) – see previous blog posts about Watches and the necessity for 5 or 6 hours sleep in a block each day -
First hour your shoulders ache from the heavy wheel in the high winds and your wrists hurt in the unaccustomed use hanging tight to cold steel of the wheel. Your feet hurt from the cold deck seeping through boots but when you sit down the one meter wide wheel takes the leverage you have standing up, so you sit for a while then have to stand. Your butt and shoulders and everywhere in between are hurting.
Second Hour steering and your back starts to hurt too.
Third Hour and the pain is deadened by tiredness. I fell asleep while standing up steering but woke up when my head hit the deck.
Then 3 hours sleep and repeat.
We passed each other like ships in the night, never being able to touch or hug because someone had to be holding the wheel.
The Autopilot would stay on for about 30 seconds and then switch off saying it needed Calibration. But the Calibration section of the electronic menu has disappeared. Its just not there! Gone. But its all new electronics, so whats going on?
The AP itself is 20 years old but the electronics have been upgraded but
not with a new Course Computer. Raymarine has upgraded all their equipment since 20 years ago so there is a new method of linking the AP, course Computer and Instruments. An expensive method. If you need one bit you need it to but the whole bloody lot (US$4,000-$6,000). So I did the sneaky and found a tach who could put the new instruments on the old AP and my outdated pre-course computer computer.
And now I’m trying to fix if while Marjorie is doing double shifts on the wheel.
We contact David on the boat Persephone in Lagos, Portugal. He is very good at keeping a problem in little bit and replying with a small but detailed method to test.
He contacted Raymarine by email all day yesterday morning, Monday. But their solutions were never about the lack of Calibration settings that should be on the menu but things like the Fluxgate compass, which I am sure is not the problem although we checked for metal next to it in the wardrobe. (We moved some chain-mail dresses of Marjorie
)
Raymarine finally said we should stop in at a close island with a Raymarine dealer and they sent a link of distributers. The closest viable islands were 2,300 nms away. 5,000 kilometres.
I looked at Marjorie at the wheel and said I don’t think we can fix this. Can we hand steer to the Caribbean? I was expecting to see a tearful face of true anguish… but I was looking at a face of resilience, determination, courage, the most beautiful face in the world.
She said: “You told me that the only thing that we don’t have redundancy for, that would be a big problem if it broke was the Auto Pilot. So I knew it would break, I just hoped it would be closer to the Islands. But when we get to the Caribbean you can buy me a rum….”
David the rabid ex-lawyer prowls Raymarine
Tue Mar 30 2021
Raymarines response to our Auto Pilot fault to find an island with a Raymarine dealership mid-Atlantic may have made Marjorie and I know we’d be hand steering for 2,300nms, but not David on the boat Persephone now in Lagos, Portugal.
We met years ago in Grenada in the Caribbean when I would hear this happy voice on the VHF radio. A happy voice means a spirit of life. I thought ‘I must meet this guy’. Since then we have bumped into each other and his partner, Trudie, in many countries including the UK in London for winter, and France, where we toured the D-Day Beaches together.
David jumped on the phone and demanded to speak to the oldest tech still alive. They checked the closet for the Old Dude and wheeled him to the phone where he said with delight he babied many of these old Type 1 linier drives… ‘they don’t make them like they used to’. “The fault is not the Calibration, it’s the electric motor brushes have a bit of dirt on them. Modern APs are ‘brushless’ but the old ones had them. If the brushes are dirty the modern electronics can’t read the fault properly and think it can’t Calibrate so it removes the Calibration option from the Menu”. He then shuffled back to his closet mumbling “don’t make em like we used to…”
So the solution is to remove the whole Auto Pilot, bring it into the saloon dining table, rip it apart and check the brushes. If the brushes are too worn down just stuff a bit of aluminium foil behind them to add a bit of length.
So with 12 hours before the next storm I think even I can do the job in that time – although it might be close.
David explains the order in text messages and a satellite phone call.
I shove Marjorie back on the wheel. In the last 24 hours she has been at the wheel for 16 or more hours. I disconnect the wires, she holds the wheel exactly stead and we disconnect the quadrant connecting pin. Then I work on the pin at the other end… which… does not move. 20 years being fixed in one position is not good on a boat. Its designed to move but doesn’t need to on our set-up so it doesn’t. I flood it with WD40 and while waiting inspect the casing of the AP. I can see the screws that hold the casing which covers the motor. Can’t I just undo them? Theres space. Not normal to have working space on a boat. I undo the screws and the casing slides along the arm and theres 2 beautiful plastic screw caps covering the brushes that a dental tool pops out. The first one I pull out shows a tiny 5 mm x 5 mm electrode block the surface of which is not corroded, just dirty. I get my scotch scouring pad and rub gently for 30 seconds till its clean. Replace it, remove the other, its clean but I scrub it anyway. Replace, re-wire, re-connect. Test…… IT WORKS!!!
I didn’t need to take the whole unit off. I didn’t even need to disconnect the drive arm or the electrics. In fact, of the 2 hours to do the job I only needed maybe 20 minutes if I had know to go straight for the screws. The cleaning of the two tiny brushes took 30 seconds each, literally. 30 seconds.
At 4pm Monday we held our breaths as we pushed the Auto Pilot button. On it went “Auto”. 30 seconds breath holding, 60 seconds… could we breathe, please? We watched it for 5 minutes before sleep called us below. At sea our bed is in the aft cabin where you can just hear the auto-pilot going bup, bup bup… buuuuup, bup bup, bup. A beautiful rhythm to go to sleep by.
Mark
