March 24: Day 12

Last night was the longest and most stressful night we have had so far. The winds had started whipping up to 25 knotts, it was raining, the seas where six foot and choppy. There was no moon. Then the auto pilot decided to stop working. I attempted hand steering so that Brett could turn off all the instruments and work on it but it was just not possible. There was nothing to steer to, no point on the horizon, no cloud, no stars and the waves were really choppy and invisible to me. Once the boat got off course just a little it was overpowered by the wind and waves. I was determined to make it work and will myself to steer the boat into darkness but sometimes discretion is the better part of valour and I had to pack it in and admit that it was safer to “hove to” (a nauticle term for backwinding the sails and essentially parking your boat on the open water). Here we are in 25 knotts parking the boat, what a drag. This was at 9:30PM (Don’t these things ever happen during the day?). I helped Brett as much as I could as he disconnected the auto pilot wires, cleaned the connections and reattatched them, a one hour repair job. It worked for one hour. At 11:30PM it stopped working altogether. Next step: replace motor. We had a spare on board and it was a real feet dragging it out from under the forward bed in bucking seas. (Don’t forget that Brett is lame, his thumb on his right hand is only barely working and he is not supposed to be using it at all.)

Regarless of weather Brett’s hand was working or not this was a two person job. Our stress was compounded by the fact that this was a motor that Brett had gotten on EBay, we sent up a silent prayer that this was not a piece of junk that had been unloaded on us. After my attempt at hand steering at night my blood was running cold at the thought of no auto pilot for the rest of the trip. We are 60 miles shy of halfway to the Marquesas, there is no turning back, there would be no relief, no help, no bailing out. If we could not fix this it would mean one of us at the helm, hand steering, 24/7. No bathroom breaks unless someone could releave you, no getting the buisness of life done while you were on shift, no six hours of rest for either of us. We would have to reduce to two hour watches and we would be zombies by the time that we reached the Marquesas. Which would probably take twice as long since hand steering at night is so difficult that we would have to hove to when it was dark or the weather was bad.

Brett is working like a champ, tucking tools into the bandage of his hand, working while trying his darndest to keep that thumb still. There is nothing to be done for it, I am only an extra set of hands and I have no idea what I am doing. At 2AM we closed out eyes, said a prayer and turned on the new auto pilot. It worked. Brett also replaced the defunct compass so now our digital boat is going the right way in the digital universe and I no longer have to do the complex math of the recipricol heading. That is the extent of our spare parts for the auto pilot so it better hold out. We checked Brett’s hand this morning and it does not look like we have done any damage to it in the rush to get the motor replaced. Halfway point at 6PM tonight, need to celebrate and burn off some steam.