Let’s get to a safe spot for troubleshooting

Making the plan for troubleshooting and beyond

Tuesday, April 27 2021. The day starts.  We get the anchor up, drink some coffee and boil some eggs for breakfast.  It was not a bad night on the open water.  Dramamine was taken after eating.  The plan today: 1. get to a marina close to Fort Myers and troubleshoot the Raymarine autopilot issue. 2. Contact Karl Weber for potential help to get to Annapolis. 3. Skip the Bahamas.

Today, sailing is magnificent. It's clear, 13 knots of wind in the right direction, 7.2 knots on the SOG (speed overground).  Yee-ha! beautiful times. Carlos is more likely to skip the Bahamas now. There is so much complexity with filing for the health visa due to COVID and the $300 boat fee plus $40 per person. Also, the shifting sand in the Bahamian ports makes it difficult for us first-timers.

Relaxing on the port side

At the helm

Hoping and wishing

There is still in our minds an opportunity to reach Annapolis for May celebrations, but until we see what is needed for the autopilot repair, we can’t be sure of our schedule. For now, we will alert Karl, but not schedule him. David and Carlos think they have it down to one module. They have been exploring the Raymarine website as well as the documentation that we got with the unit.  Hopefully, it is a quick replacement. We should be in Fort Myers before nightfall.

Taking our time in a safe port

We landed at the Pink Shell Marina around 5pm.  There is still plenty of daylight.  The dock crew helps us to into a slip, and we are “alone” on our end.  The Pink Shell is a marina and a hotel, so there is a lot to take in.  The price was a little higher than expected but we also had the amenities of showers, washer dryers, pools and walking distance to a lot of great restaurants.

We started troubleshooting as soon as we were settled.  David had drawn a couple of interconnection maps to help the conversation.  Shots were taken of the different components in order to capture part numbers and interconnections accurately.

Not a lot of success with discovering the issue 

Recorded the trip setting at 1540 nautical miles for the season, which includes the routes from St. Thomas to Sarasota.

Autopilot problems persist and there is little response from service vendors. Perry, who was the installer from St. Thomas, gave Carlos some tips and tries, but they don't seem to work. Connectivity to this device that picks up the heading is the root cause - this is the EV-1.  It can't see other devices and the other devices can't see it on the boat’s network. What else can be done?  Amazon has the part over $500 But delivery wouldn't be till May 4. However, we'd still need to update and calibrate in order to use it.  We used our time to take Uber trips to different West Marinas in Fort Myers.  One to get a Sea-talk backbone and the second to get a whole EV-1 unit. The Sea-talk backbone appears to have power but the EV-1 doesn't see anything else on the network. We purchased an EV-1 unit at West Marine, but it didn't even power up. So we sent that one back. Did I mentioned that each Uber trip to West Marine is $45?

Let’s enjoy the area

At the end of the day, there was some time for R&R in downtown Ft. Meyers.  A bit of a walk through a fantastic neighborhood to a restaurant and a boardwalk of cheap souvenir stores, bars and hangouts.  Not a mask to be seen anywhere…. We thought we caught one of the launches from Cape Canaveral and closer to home, there was a great full moon

No success - in person or online

So we were unsuccessful in two days to even get anyone to come look at the autopilot issue.  Raymarine helpline insists that something is amiss in the Sea Talk cabling but we are suspect of that, since (usually) cables don't rot in place. He did not seem to think we needed a new download, we had the next to the last version installed.  And the systems worked from November 2020 to April 21. So as a last ditch effort, I emailed a contact that I got through Facebook. We'll see - fingers crossed. I must admit my anxiousness is an all time high,  Want to eat but can't.  Want to do something productive but am consumed by the responsibility of this day's passage. Getting out of my comfort zone to be sure. We departed after fueling 11:15am.   Goodbye Fort Myers. 

Never understood the draw of Florida, Native Gaming is a big attraction and money maker

It is understandable why so many people want to move to Florida. There's money, good weather and good beaches. The money feeds on itself so there are a lot of nice resorts with top notch service amenities. A huge boating community because the coastal homes have their own dock.  And the addition of casinos, located on Seminole land. A little research reveals the Seminoles opened the first high-stakes bingo hall and casino in the United States in 1979 and now owns 6 properties in central and southern Florida.. That first facility was the forerunner of the Indian Gaming movement throughout North America.  There is a potential deal to allow the Seminole tribe to be in control of the sports betting industry in Florida, potentially netting the state $500 million per year. There is extensive history of the tribe and its resistance to the European expansion in the peninsula on it’s website. A federally recognized tribe, it is able to keep the descendants intact and protected, similar to the the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, known for Foxwoods and Mohegan Tribe, known for Mohegan Sun.  Recently, the Wampanoag Tribe of Cape Cod took their first step toward self actualization through the granting of control of 320 acres of their tribal lands in Massachusetts.

Goodbye and looking forward for help

As we depart, the search starts for servicers or marinas in Fort Lauderdale that can fix the issue with the autopilot. In addition to speaking to one guy, Bill Reagan was contacted for his input and advice. Bill responded that he had the same problem with his autopilot unit. He did a software update on his on the MFD (that's the multifunction display) and it all worked okay.