Day 15 - Monitor Repaired

My message to Scanmar went out during my midnight UTC Sailmail session. An hour later, at 1 AM, I logged into another Sailmail session in order to download the grib file that I had requested at midnight and was amazed to find a response from Ron Geick of Scanmar regarding the Monitor problem. He suggested to possible causes of the top gear being rotated 180 degrees (water paddle struck an object or a broken washer at the bottom of the pendulum strut) then presented a step by step procedure on maneuvering the gears into proper alignment. Wow! I had not expected a response until the next midnight's Sailmail session at the earliest.

In went into a sleep schedule with a wake up call every hour so that I could ensure that the autopilot was still engaged but at 2 AM I woke up with a start because the boat was very quiet and the Rutland had stopped humming. I went into the cockpit convinced that the autopilot had disengaged but no, it was still holding course and the wind had simply died down. After 30 minutes of watching the headsail fret in a wind falling below 8 kts I decided that a bad night of sleep just wasn't worth the 1.5 knots that we were making, so I lay the boat ahull and let myself sleep. Besides, I needed to wake up refreshed in the morning so that I could repair the Monitor.

I had a long sleep until 9 AM because every time that I surfaced I could hear no sound from the Rutland, which meant insufficient wind, so I would roll back over. It was a cloudy day and the wind was still below 10 kts. After studying Ron's instructions over a cup of coffee I suited up, gathered my tools, took a deep breath, and headed for the Monitor. Fortunately in order to protect the watervane from slamming during the predicted 25 kt winds I had secured the end of it with ropes tied to either side of the cockpit. This gave me wonderful control of the angle of the watervane in the rolling sea, and I would need such control for meshing the gears correctly. Another piece of good fortune was that the sea had calmed down from the day before, and no longer was the stern slamming hard into the water with a "whoosh" followed by the water rising half way up the Monitor frame.

There was a lock nut to be released and my first choice of a 19 mm wrench was spot on. I used a 20 mm wrench to restrain the lower nut. I managed to mesh the gears correctly and lock everything down with surprising ease. I then attended to two areas where metal needed to be straightened (which I have reported to Ron) then locked the watervane into the water, set sail, and soon had the Monitor engaged and steering the boat with a 10 kt wind of the starboard beam. An hour later the wind was up to 15 kts and the Monitor was still performing well.

Scarcely 24 hours after diagnosis of the problem Scanmar had sent me the instructions for the fix way out here in the South Atlantic and the Monitor was back on line. That is a great testament to modern communications and Scanmar's superb customer support. I figure that my message arrived at Ron's desk in San Francisco after 4 PM. He must have a great email management system and certainly has an approach that reflects the huge amount of experience that Scanmar must have in supporting mariners at sea.

I was hoping that this would be the end of the matter, but if the problem happened again I would know what to do.

At noon our position was 35S01, 25W24, giving us a miserable n-n distance of 17 miles in the direction 166T. The barometer had fallen 7 points to 1011, and it was drizzling outside. We had been back on the move for two hours and were making 5 kts to the SW.

At 1 PM I went topside and rolled out a bit more headsail, with the clew level with the mast. This took our speed up to 5.5-6 kts before an apparent wind of 13 kts. The sail looked magnificent and I was very pleased with the setup. I had considered putting up the mainsail but for running downwind and the wind expected to rise to 25 kts the headsail provided all of the boat speed that I needed, and was much easier to manage than the mainsail.

After an easy few hours of lunch (noodle soup) snoozing, and reading the Kindle I went topside to check around and to set up two short lines from the binnacle that can reach the Monitor control lines so that in future I can tie them off when the Monitor is not in use to keep the watervane centered and prevent it from banging the sides of the frame. The sailing was very good. The clouds had thinned out and now we were sunshine making an easy 4 knots ahead of a 15 kt breeze. The sea was moderate, consistent with the strength of the breeze. At 5 PM I would have my beer of the day and think about what movie I would watch tonight.

At 9 PM the Monitor was still steering the boat SE. The sea had become rougher and our boat speed had dropped to 3.5 kts. I did not roll out more sail because the boat was traveling comfortably and so was I.

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