If It Can Break, It Will

One of our last weeks in Puerto Vallarta, I was talking with some other sailors at a potluck dinner.  Someone mentioned that their auto-pilot went out on their way from San Diego to Puerto Vallarta.  "I can't imagine," I said, "you'd actually have to pay attention to where you are going!"

Later, I tried to push the memory of this conversation out of my mind.  As if I would somehow jinx our auto-pilot if I thought about it too much.  The truth is, I had never even considered life without the auto-pilot.  At the time we were battling dead batteries, a corroded freezer plate and a watermaker that hadn't been maintained.  These were things, which in  my mind were somehow tangible and fixable.  But the auto-pilot, well that is something that is in a different category- more mystical.

On the last leg of our 18 hour  journey from Manzanilo to Zihuatanejo, the wind was picking up to 25 knots and the boat was getting tossed about by the 8-foot waves.  Our auto-pilot started acting funny.  It would be engaged, but then seem to forget what it was doing, and start wandering off.  By the time it got about 40 degrees off course, an alarm would beep. and the auto pilot screen would read "Drive Stopped."  You would then need to turn the autopilot off and either hand steer, which required paying 100% attention, or attempt to re-engage the auto pilot.

You may be wondering, wouldn't the person at the helm realize something was going wrong before to was 40 degrees off?  Not if there are building seas and it is 4 o'clock in the morning and it is pitch black and the person at the helm is operating on three hours of sleep!

Well, morning came, the sun came up, and the seas settled down.  Once we knew what was going on, we were able to stay on course manually.  The auto-pilot worked less and less as the journey went on, and by the time we reached Zihuatanejo, it would not work at all requiring full time manual steering.

After some on-line investigation, Mark learned that the way to temporarily fix the problem is to take a mallet and bang on it, which frees the brushes, and it will work again.  Well, we tried this a couple of times, and banging it does temporarily fix the problem, but only for about 15 minutes.  

So, we are still in Zihuatanejo, day 13 and counting.  We are looking into ordering a replacement motor and having Mark's mom send it here.  It has been difficult finding a Raymarine retailer who can ship the part via DHL, which is the only delivery service here in town.

We will be here another week or so awaiting delivery.  Mark is looking into having the part sent to Acapulco, which is a two day journey south for us.

Though I am anxious to move on so that we are closer to home, I realize that there are worse places to sit and wait for a few weeks.