DRAMA OF BREAKDOWN OF AUTOPILOT
02 July 2011 | Northern Atlantic
Dawn
We left Sao Miguel with great anticipation of arriving in Portimao & being with our friends in 8 to 10 days at the most. The trip started very peacefully low winds small waves & unfortunately no sailing only the motors. Disaster struck at about 10-30am on Sunday the 3rd of July which was day 4 at sea. We were both sitting in the Saloon I was doing crossword puzzles & David was reading up on the Atlantic Crossing book when we heard what sounded like a big ship blowing it's horn at us, we both jumped up to see what was going on as there was no warning on our Radar or AIS To our horror we saw a message on our Autopilot "NO DRIVE" well you cannot imagine how we both felt, no auto pilot means manual steering & worse for the next 500 nm & our Router was telling us bad weather is expected. Now down to the nitty gritty David & I took a step back & the first thing was David started giving me lessons on how to steer with the engines, well we soon realized that it was not going to work & another plan had to be invented. David being the clever man that he is then proceeded to get out the emergency tiller which was about 4 feet long to be fitted onto the top of the scoop which means the first big wave that hits is going to take us with it & besides we cannot see where we are going so clearly another plan had to be made. We thought of ringing the breakdown service but realized we were a bit out of range & on our own. David decided to extend the emergency tiller by duct taping the boat hook to the tiller to make it easier to steer. This did not work either, fortunately we had some spare spinaker blocks & were able to rig up a rope system attached to an emergency tiller which allowed us to take 2 ropes from the tiller with blocks to the Helm seat we were then able to steer with great difficulty from that seat by pulling on each rope . We then decided to tie the 2 ropes to a bilge pump handle & use the handle with the assistance of a fishing bucket to lever the ropes in both directions. We had to stick to a strict 3 hours on & 3 hours off for 4 days with weather predictions of heavy seas & high winds which happened fortunately only on the last day. We have never been so relieved to enter a harbour. We radioed the Coast Guard to let him know our predicament as there were a great many tankers & cargo ships around really close & asked him to notify them of our steering problem & to keep clear of us We also radioed the CasCais Marina to ask for assistance to enter the Marina but what we did not realize was all the fishing traps around which was like driving dodgem cars to avoid them. We had an escort of two dinghy's into the Marina & the best ever help tying up. David & I broke out the rum & coke & totally relaxed with an early night. We really have enjoyed CasCais & our friend David came to visit us as he had a business meeting here so we had a great Peri Peri chicken lunch with him. We were also lucky in that we were able to have a brilliant engineer to fix our system as it was a bit complicated due to the cable having snapped somewhere inside the tube running through the middle of the yacht. His years of experience & great knowledge were to our advantage as we are able to leave to-morrow for Portimao.