[Greyhawkupdates] Beautiful Night

[Tim Allen GREYHAWK]

It was a beautiful and interesting night. Around 9:30, the brracket that connects my autopilot to the tiller broke! I reduced sail, got the boat back on course more or less, blanced and tied off the tiller while I scrounge around to see what I might have on board to fabricate a replacement bracket. Unfortunately I don't have a stockpile of metal scrap nor a machine shop on board. In the end I was able to cobble something together using the two pieces left over from the original bracket, my drill, a sail tie and a pair of vice-grip pliers. The new bracket is set up so that the autopilot ram hooks on from underneath, and so I needed a way to hold it up onto the upside down pin. Originally I tried tieing it up with light line, but it would fall off at the wrong moment. Vice Grips to the rescue -- they are now holding the end of the autopilot ram up onto the pin on the tiller, and we're good to go. But I sailed for a while under reduced sail and with just the tiller tied off while working this out, and trying to get some sleep so that I could think through the problem.

Now bright sunlight, light winds, somewhat variable ... it is pleasant, although I wish we were going a little faster. I can see four other boats in sight: Aggressive (in my class) ahead, and Ariana and Adhara (both class 2) behind.

Regards,

Tim
GREYHAWK


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