Our original "plan" back in Grenada was to install our new autopilot pump and then head to Martinique to weigh down our boat with French wine, pastries, and cheese. This route also allowed us to test our autopilot close to shore to ensure it was working before heading to west to Venezuela. As with most plans on a boat, that's not how it happened.
After weeks of hot, exhausting work on the boat and one more trip into St. Georges for a roti at Nutmeg Restaurant (where we embarrassingly knew all the staff and they knew our orders) and one more scoop of chocolate and nutmeg ice-cream at the Chocolate Museum, we left Prickly Bay in Grenada. We headed for the Underwater Sculpture Park just outside of St. Georges. The new Octopus (Made in Canada) autopilot worked like a charm. For the first time in eight months our boat was steering itself and we were freed up to adjust the sails, prepare gourmet meals, write blog entries, etc. The Sculpture Park is a Grenadian attraction that we have been looking forward to visiting since we arrived. We grabbed a mooring ball and hopped in the water to see some incredible underwater stone sculptures - a writer, the Nutmeg Princess, Jesus, and a circle of children holding hands. The sculptures are about 15 feet below the surface and unmarked so you feel like you are a star snorkeler as you "discover" each one.
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| Underwater Sculpture Park |
The next morning we said goodbye to Grenada to head for somewhere in St.Vincent and the Grenadines - about an hour into our sail we heard the high pitched squeal coming from our autopilot and the screen flashed "Rudder Response Failure". The original message we got back in March leaving the Bahamas. I can not accurately describe how either of us felt at that moment. James went down to take a look at the autopilot and I continued to hand steer. James tried several things but nothing worked for longer than about half an hour. We decided to keep going as far as we could that day in order to make it to Martinique (and a certified SIMRAD repair person) as fast as possible. After hitting a short but nasty squall we anchored in darkness in Bequia, SVG (the place where Customs threatened to impound our boat - we were super excited to be back).
When the sun rose on James' birthday we both got to work on the autopilot. Later that morning we took it our for a test drive. James was measuring the voltage to the autopilot circuit board and I was driving when I saw a new error message - one we've never seen "Clutch Overload". Turns out James' hand slipped and the voltmeter hit the circuit board and burnt the circuit. There was no fixing this without making it to Martinique. Happy friggin' Birthday! We were SO tired of hand steering that we skipped overnighting it and jumped from Bequia to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia - slept for a few hours then arrived the next morning in Ste-Anne, Martinique - home to Jacques, our favourite French repairman.
If you have not seen the animated movie "The Triplets of Belleville", stop reading immediately and watch it. Not only could Jacques easily be a character in this movie, but he is the most patient, helpful, and honest marine electronics person you can imagine. He is the guy that, on our first trip to Martinique, took one look at our SIMRAD autopilot and declared "It is what you say in English when you cook bread..." "Toast?" "Oui, toast."
Jacques now listened intently to our short-circuit story for a good 10 minutes, paying no attention to the other 8 people impatiently waiting to see him. He said "I can fix it, return on Saturday." We breathed a sigh of relief as a new autopilot computer would cost a lot of money and not fix the original problem. Technical note: an autopilot is comprised of a few important components - the hydraulic pump and RAM which physically move the rudder, the computer which decides when and how much to move the rudder, and the compass and position sensor that give feedback to the computer. All expensive, and all subject to harsh marine conditions.
While waiting on pins and needles for this repair, life was difficult. There was nothing to be done but eat baguettes, cheese, wine, and the occasional croissant if one was in need of a snack. When Saturday finally arrived we plugged everything in and held our breath - no errors! We quickly hoisted the anchor and set out on a test sail. However it wasn't long before we encountered the "Rudder Response Failure" once more. When Jacques saw us come through his door he sighed and rolled his eyes in the typical French fashion. He immediately had the diagnosis - air in the lines. But of course! Under a significant amount of pressure, any unwanted air will compress rather than apply force on the rudder, so we had to get that air out! Unfortunately there is no way to determine if all the air is out without going sailing in real-life conditions to get enough pressure.
So, every morning and afternoon for over a week we: sailed back and forth for hours in the bay near Ste-Anne, received another error message, motored back to the anchorage in despair, bled the lines again, and repeated. Now, in any other circumstances going for a leisurely sail in protected waters for a few hours a day would be quite lovely. But we dreaded hearing that inevitable alarm, which meant the next leg of the trip would be delayed yet again.
We took a break to clean the long-neglected underside of the boat. The marine life underneath was starting to outshine some of the nicest reefs we had seen. While coming up for air I noticed what I thought was some dirt in James' ear - until it moved! I thought "impossible" but it didn't take long to confirm that it was a moderate sized black crab that had previously been living peacefully on our hull before relocating to James' ear. In order to not freak him out, I calmly said "just wait here for a sec while I get the tweezers." In order not to freak the crab out, I had to quickly grab its leg and hurl it back into the sea while trying not to gag. Thank god it was a clean extraction - I had no idea how I would explain this at a hospital in French! After this we welcomed testing the autopilot again!
Good weather for the three-day passage came and went and with it our travel buddy. We had only reports of the first snowfalls back home to keep our spirits up. When we were able to use the autopilot for two hours without a failure we decided to try it on a longer passage. We embarked on an overnight outing to St Lucia which felt quite illicit as we did not bother checking out/in to either country. The autopilot did reasonably well, especially on the return trip as we didn't hear the alarm and the conditions were pretty challenging. We were ready to go!
Just a small matter of the weather... A strong trough was making its way into the eastern Caribbean that week and expected to bring some rain and strong winds to the islands. The storm was much, much worse than forecast and took everyone by surprise. At around 8pm the winds cranked up to around 35-40 with higher gusts - from the WEST! You may think, so what? The Ste-Anne anchorage has no land to protect it from west winds and when it starts blowing like that you start seeing eight foot swells heading straight for you and everyone else around you - pure chaos! Several boats dragged towards the shore, a couple of boats ran aground, friends of ours lost their dinghy and kayak, and all through the night boats pulled their anchors up and motored around waiting for the storm to subside. In the early hours things started calming down and we could relax. We had been spared.
While waiting out the bad weather we purchased a life raft from a Canadian couple and I felt much safer embarking on the three day sail with a life raft aboard. While chatting with the couple we told them we were headed west and they told us about another boat headed that way and that they were the same age as us - what?! Cruisers that same age as us?! We found them in the anchorage and went over for a drink. Their boat is Noomi and they were planning on heading to Bonaire but once we said we were going to Los Roques and they googled photos of Los Roques they decided to join us! Perfect!
Once the storm had passed out of the area, a nice period of calm weather was on the horizon. No thanks to SIMRAD, we were ready to go.
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