Bluewaft - Bluewaft Log - Day 18: Teamwork overcomes all challenges!

Light winds were the order of the day. We spent most of the day on a reach going more north than we would have liked, the rationale being it was a comfortable point of sail and our VMG was still quite good. A couple of days ago we’d discussed the need to watch sleep and diet and made the (prophetic) observation that the last week of sailing was when accidents happen. We obviously should have touched wood! (I am convinced that these things always ‘happen in threes’…) Here’s how it played out:

After lunch we had a slight mishap where the preventer wrapped itself around the end of a hand-rail and before anyone could do anything the boom lifted and bent the rail. Cosmetic damage only and easy enough to fix. After a glass of wine at sun-downers (literally not even the first glass) we decided to change tack. In the process of furling the gennaker (by hand) we lost steerage and the autohelm had a fit. We (belatedly) put the engine on and despite resetting, the autohelm wouldn’t come out of ‘standby’ mode. We concluded that the autohelm hydraulic pump must have blown a fuse. The only problem was that we couldn’t find the pump anywhere. It was not shown in the manual; we couldn’t see it in either engine room or at the helm station pod. We decided to use our ‘dial a friend’ option and called Terry in Sydney (friends of ours who’d previously owned a Lagoon 560 – Magali provided the number).

In the mean time, Alex was hand steering Bluewaft. Not an easy thing with a following sea and wind shifts. We were then called on deck as the first reef had given way and the boom was threatening to clear the helm. We centred the boom and stayed it using two preventer lines, tightened the lazy lines and then put in the second reef. Problem averted for now. Back to the Auto-helm… With Terry’s guidance we found the hydraulic pump in the ceiling of the outside salon (obvious really –NOT). All seemed fine in there. We then went to the Raymarine Auto-helm controller in the electrics room and checked the fuses. All good. We replaced them anyway but no change. The prospect of hand steering for the next week loomed large. We then noticed a small button – the size of a pin head – on the top left of the unit, and a faint LED labelled ‘off’ glowing red. With nothing to lose we moved it into the ‘on’ position and presto, Auto-helm was working again. We left the jib and main up and sailed on the whites in ‘Auto’ mode through the night (we didn’t want to risk any additional load on the system trying to use ‘Windvane’ mode). This whole process took four hours and through team work we were able to get the boat back on course and sailing well. In the end only a minor diversion, not much fuel used, and boat ‘ship shape’ again (although we did decide to skip dinner).

We dodged a number of squalls through the night, but made pretty good time. In the morning the winds finally picked up, ranging from 10-15kts. We were able to goose-wing and are making a solid 6-7 kts (at last). So, fingers crossed, we’ve had our ‘three’ and plain sailing from now on!