MOnday Night
Monday night was very rough all night, but fortunately the wind has abated a little. We are still under storm sails and going quite well. A bit of a disaster this morning around 0300. Flinders is dead! A bolt has failed- probably metal fatigued after 8 years of hard work. I replaced its companion last year but forgot to do the other one before this trip- too much rushing. Unfortunately, the control arm is somewhat mangled and a couple of bolts are broken as well as a couple of welds. We can probably fix it in Noumea and will order a new part from Quebec ASAP. In the meantime, we hope the backup electronic autopilot keeps working. It can handle the conditions now, but not bad stuff.
At this rate we will be in Thursday night but might keep a little slower for the autopilot's sake and try for Friday morning. We certainly do not wish to hand steer the rest of tyhe way, but at least we had Flinders (the wind vane) for what was hopefully the worst stuff.
The Crew
