Amari - Day12 On Autopilot

Captain Jack Sparrow drove the Black Pearl into what the special effects department seemed to indicate was a 50 knot gale with thunderstorms. His first mate implored him to take it easier on the boat.

But Sparrow, being the star of this picture, was not deterred as the first mate hollered over the howl of the storm, “what’s putcha in such a fine mood this evening Cap'm?”

Camera flashes to Jack, cue the lightning to silhouette of him hand steering the Pearl through the night in that gale, hat inexplicably still on his head, when he replies, “We’re gaining on them!”
Aaaaand Scene.

Back on Earth, I know that sailors used to hand steer all the time, and I guess they had to. But doing that for hours at a time is a killer.

We lost our autopilot on Amari on a shakedown cruise from North Carolina to Bahamas and back. Shakedown cruise indeed. What shook down first was our dinghy from the davits, but then the autopilot failed, and we had to hand steer through day and night.

It was exhausting for all the crew, and we were so very happy to get her patched up with a new and improved system that will not let us down again, knock on gel coat!

The autopilot works by pulling down GPS signals from space and using that to correct steerage on the fly. And this is beautiful because I can point Amari in a direction and then stare at this screen for hours, writing this post to describe the beauty of not having to hand steer the ship.

It’s important to point out that even though you’re not steering, you can’t nap up there. You still have to check the horizon every 15 minutes. Tankers and cruise ships move fast out here.

So yes autopilot is an amazing blessing, but it comes at a cost. The drive for the motor that moves the wheel is right under the head of our bed in the aft cabin. So we hear every micro correction of the wheel through the night.

Nice.

Actually you do tune it out after a while. At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m not sleeping, lol. Although we willingly pay the price in annoyance and sleep deprivation, this isn’t the only cost for our handy shipmate.

All those micro corrections are powered by the batteries, so each movement drains the charge through the day and night.

To counter this energy suck, we have both wind and solar to top up the batteries (and aren’t we SO eco-friendly), but there’s a problem. We are in the trade winds, which are running behind us. So even when the winds are hitting 20 knots like they are at this moment, Amari may be sailing at 7 knots forward with the wind.

So the effective breeze moving the turbine is only 13 knots, which won’t generate a lot of juice to refill the batteries.

And of course the solar panels pay off none of our energy debt over night. So every evening when the sun goes down we have to top them off with the diesel generator just to make it through the night.

I guess eco greenery only goes so far, but it sure is nice to have “genny” as a backstop, to keep the batteries filled, to keep the autopilot humming, and to keep me writing through the nights.


Update on the Bread

Yesterday I made bread on board to which at least one reader responded that the picture did not inspire confidence, lol.

Well there, ye of little faith, the bread came out fabulous and we had our smoked salmon, cream cheese w capers, cut tomato, onion, cracked pepper and a wee drizzle of lemon over the top.

Let me tell you, I was inspired! 😉