Whaat!!?? We are just underway and the AP fails????
David arrived on 4/23
Great to see him and welcome his participation in the adventure... Carlos spent time to orient him to the boat and some of the most important things he needed to learn - knots, steering, instruments, docking, etc. I caught up with him on status within the family and what was going on in his life.
There is also a lot of preparation to map out the route and plan for the weather. Carlos hunkered down with the Navionics maps on his tablet. These would mimic the chart plotter on the boat.
Provisioning - we gotta eat!
This is a critical part of the trip. You want to have enough food, but not too much. Since the microwave won't really be accessible (no 120AC during sail time), it is best to think about things that can be prepared on the stovetop or in the oven. One pot meals make the most sense, although there is still a level of preparation before everything goes in the pot. We stocked up at Walmart and the Cardoso family give us plenty of other staples - bread, frozen vegetables, liquor, and snacks. Good (healthy and easy to consume) snacks are also important, because if the seas are rough, it is not so desirable to be in the kitchen. Definitely load up with plenty of drinking water!
So long Madeira Beach!
Nice birthday celebration for Lita in advance of moving to the boat. Sushi, bacalao and cake! The family came out to see us off, and we proceeded to prepare ourselves for the next morning shove off.
Let’s get moving!
We got everything to the boat and settled in. The Iridium Go unit was a disappointment. Other than broadcasting individual locations along the way, it requires the use of its own proprietary apps. We can't tie our existing apps to it. We can send text messages and make phone calls using the iridium number, but since we are staying close to the coast, connectivity is not an issue. So, we don't have internet on board. Will have to research other options for that. Also, it does not continuously map your location, for instance to a website. We’ll need more time to get a better tool for communicating our location to family.
The trip started out a little shaky, then it got worse
Got up early on Monday and got underway. One bridge at John's pass at 9am. Lifted mainsails about 11am. It was a struggle, David was new to the boat positioning and response time, also the sail kept getting caught in the lazyjacks. The wind died and we reverted to motoring to Ft. Meyers. About 4pm, we heard an alarm on the helm. The autopilot had lost its"pilot" ie the actual navigational coordinates it needed to make steering decisions. We rebooted, cycled power on all the instruments, checked the chain - still no resolution. Maybe the servo motor??? Our engineering minds went into overdrive. Since it was so late in the day, we needed to stop to assess this situation. With no marinas open in Venice, we had to anchor.
The moonrise from our anchor spot
Somewhere south of Venice Beach, we stopped
Carlos picked a spot, we dropped anchor and dropped a pin to family and followers so they would know where we were. Somewhere just south of Venice, but easy to see the shore.
FYI, with the autopilot out, this meant that someone had to constantly steer the boat. This is very tiring and stressful. We had a long way to go and it would only be more tedious if we had no AP.
This could be a very long trip.
