May 17 - 20 — Old Salts In Big Cold Wind, Autopilot Restored (I Hope) and GIC

 

The wind moderated a bit during lunch, but still required reefs on both ILENE, with seven souls, and Lady Kat, with five. Lady Cat’s crew included one who mastered the “art” of the selfie, which I have not. I put the second reef in the main before the start by accidentally putting its loop onto the hook at the boom’s gooseneck to form the sail’s tack. But thinking that I had put in reef one forward, I cranked in the clew with reefing line one. And it took me a couple of minutes to figure out why the sail had such a lousy shape. Once figured out the error was easily fixed by cranking in reef line two. We made up to six knots with drastically reduced sail on our habitual circumnavigation of Hart Island. Lady Cat made great speed for such a smaller boat, my hat is off to Captain Dave,  but elected to not join us in the passage through Hart Island Sound and did not join us for the libations after getting back on her mooring. Having put delicious strawberries and cheese and crackers aboard ILENE “for later”, thank you Anne, the folks on Lady Catb abandoned those provisions for us to enjoy.

My next trip to City Island was to pick up the new batten from Doyle Sails and to attempt to restore Auto. The latter had caused me a lot of agita.

These pictures describe the system. The small Rudder Reference Transducer, where I correctly thought the problem was, has a small ball sticking up from its right end in the photo. Clipped onto that ball is a small rod, less than a pencil’s diameter, its other end attached to a bracket bolted onto the bottom of the rudder arm as shown in the photos. There is some sort of spring in the round base which provides a tension that the transducer apparently converts to an electrical voltage which varies depending on the position of the rudder and that voltage is transmitted to the ”Course Computer”.

I took the task light and all the tools and supplies needed to repair the electrical wires (that I assumed I had incorrectly reconnected) with me down into the lazarette. But what greeted my eyes  was that the connecting rod was detached from the rudder arm! So the problem was mechanical, not electrical, so  my second dive into the lazarette was to bring a screw driver to reattach the plastic receiving clip of the connecting arm to the bottom of the rudder arm. (On its round trip flight to Florida, the connecting rod and plastic clip had flown attached to the transducer.) I had bolted the plastic clip back on a couple of weeks ago but apparently it had fallen off. Getting close, I saw that actually the problem was not the bolts attaching the plastic clip to the rudder arm and so I finally brought the right tools and supplies with me on my third trip down: a glue and large pliers. The right end of the connecting rod is not screwed into the plastic clip, but has vertical ridges parallel to its shaft and it is simply pushed up into the plastic clip. So with glue on it I pushed it up into the clip and I think the dreaded repair is accomplished without the need for a thousand dollar visit by an electronics tech. At least I hope so. Powering the unit, the normal display appeared on the control panel instead of the cryptic error message and the “plus ten” and “minus ten” buttons seemed to move the rudder. The final test will be to see if it works while we are underway, but that will not take place until after we have moved aboard on May 21. I get a big thrill whenever I am able to fix something, but must restrain myself from patting myself on the. back until then. 

And Saturday night was the Harlem’s 140th annual spring bash, the Going Into Commission party, with a capacity crowd welcoming the 2023 season despite the heavy rain. A clear plastic tent was pitched atop the deck inside the newly painted red fence around the patio. Delicious food. The ritual is always the same, one of life’s constants.

Tomorrow we move aboard! I’m psyched!