September 20, 2009

Sunday Southbound
By late morning yesterday we passed thru the ship channel and left the lagoon of New Caledonia behind. The wind has been slow in backing to the East, so we have spent the first 24 hours going upwind. It was a bit gusty, averaging 15 knots; enough to kick up steep waves about two meters high, which had us bucking, and the autopilot working a bit to keep us straight. Which I'm sure is what brought out the weakness of the circuit breaker that fed the autopilot power. About mid afternoon, the pilot started kicking itself into "standby"mode. So I set up the wind steering vane, and went to work checking out all the connections on the circuit until I found the bad breaker. By the time I had it repaired, I could see that the wind vane was steering better in those conditions than the autopilot did, so after a test run, I put the vane back in charge. It did a great job until well after midnight, when the wind came down below 10 knots, and backed toward the East as predicted. By this morning we were cruising over a smooth, gentle sea, with all the sail set, and no longer able to keep speed above 5 knots. Still, we're going in the right direction, now tracking to pass East of Norfolk on a direct course for Opua. Hope the wind lets us stay on the rhumb line course. As of noon NZ time, Sunday, we are at 24 deg 12 min S, 166 deg 44 min E, steering a course 150 degrees, but going slower by the hour. May end up having to motor a while before this is over. Ted