Now What?

Yesterday morning we had the boat ready for sailing and carefully planned our exit from the pen given that we had a gentle southerly wind from our stern. Our plan was to do a sea trial by motoring out of Opua and doing a tour of the Bay of Islands using the engine. We were going to drop anchor at one of the islands and do a 2-hour walk around it visiting historic Mauri fortifications. We would then weigh anchor and head motor back to the marina by another route.

We cast off all lines and I started to motor back and discovered that I had no steering - I could not turn the rudder. We nudged the boat back into the pen, tied her up, and started to investigate. The rudder was hard to starboard. We engaged the autopilot and instructed it to steer one degree to port and slowly it moved the rudder toward amidships. This told us that the steering mechanism was OK and that the Autohelm worked OK when in "Auto" mode. It seemed like the Autohelm was not releasing its control of the steering system when in "standby" mode.

I checked below the cockpit and confirmed that the two new batteries that had been stacked on the pre-existing batteries in no way obstructed the movement of the steering. Soon Alex, Bruce's employee, was on board. He disengaged the coupling of the linear drive (i.e. the ram by which the Autohelm turns the rudder) and voila! the steering was free and easy. Alex removed the linear drive and asked me if I wanted it fixed. (Hey, Alex, is the Pope Catholic???)

Alex took the unit to the shop while I looked at for the technical manual on the unit. When I delivered the manual to Alex he was experimenting with the unit and got the ram to move in and out by energizing the motor and the clutch. But for some reason that neither of us could explain the ram would not move in and out freely when not energized.

I got on the telephone and internet trying to get advice from John at ICS in Adelaide and Peter at Maritime Electronics in Fremantle. In the meantime Alex was dismantling the unit. This bothered me because even though Alex had done careful, and methodical mechanical work I didn't think that he would know much about Autohelm linear drives.

By the time I got back to the shop Alex had totally dismantled the unit and understood how it worked. His report was not good. There was rust in the unit which would not allow the shaft rotate freely. Bruce was speaking to someone at Raymarine about it. It was confirmed what I had learned from John in Adelaide, that the linear drive was a really, really old model. The best option was to replace it with a new one.

The good news: Raymarine had one in stock and it could be delivered today. Also, the new unit had the same footprint as the old so that fitting it would be easy.

The bad news: The unit would cost me over $3,000 NZD plus of course the labor.

I gave the OK to order the new unit.

Later I visited the workshop to retrieve my manuals and told Bruce that I had come to give him the shirt off my back as I started to remove my top. Later I saw Bruce as he was closing the shop for the day and I told him that Alex had done a great job with the Autohelm. Bruce said that Alex is a qualified marine engineer from the Ukraine. He had had a lot of experience on container ships etc.

Arnold said that we had to get out of Opua before I went broke. I mumbled something about Hotel California ("You can check out any time but you can never leave.") Perhaps Reg put it best shortly after I purchased my second boat Angie. Something along the lines of 'You can pay now or you can pay later, but you always pay.'

Later Arnold asked me if there was any part of the boat that I had not gone over. The only thing that I could think of that has not been removed, replaced, fixed, maintained, or thoroughly inspected is the rudder post fittings. Having said that, I would be surprised if Pachuca does not give me more surprises in the future.

Friends, do not even think of doing extensive cruising without a lot of money at your disposal. One approach is to buy a new boat for a few hundreds of thousands of dollars then spending tens of thousands more putting up the cockpit shelter, radar, extra sails, etc. I chose the route of purchasing a older but well found boat and then being dragged kicking and screaming into a refit program. I am still well ahead financially over the new boat option, and I've got a lot of new top-of-the-line gear. But there has been a lot of cost time and effort in doing the remedial work.

You can pay now or you can pay later, but you always pay.