With the help of our friend John in Santa Barbara, we finally made the step to add another member to our crew: an auto-tiller.
This little machine cuts out the time we need to keep making adjustments to a steady wind, and even lets us leave the helm for periods of time, while staying on calculated course. It's great.
We wonder why we never had one before and appreciate the new-found freedom we enjoy with the extra hands and time, not to mention the complete absence of the knee bruises we get from steering manually all day and all night. It has been making our trip up quite enjoyable.
We are just here to respond to the wind and waves, and the little movements are left to the machine, straight lines abound on our GPS.