eXite - Exite 25/11 - halfway point

Early morning we reached the halfway point and celebrated with apple pie. 1080Nm left until a full night sleep again. If nothing major breaks it looks like we will arrive first or second of December - but you never know as a lot of things can happen.

As a short handed crew we really feel for the other short handed boats that now suffers from an autopilot that doesn’t work, a nightmare. Everything sailing wise works great for us now, but that is due to the autopilot steering like a champion around 20 hours a day so we can get our rest and sleep. Before leaving Las Palmas we bought a complete autopilot to have as a spare, to hopefully just switch the cables to the new one if the one we have would brake - just to be on the safe side.
However, we have been having some minor issues as well that is hard to find the source for.

As mentioned in an earlier post we had a phenomenon where the wind wane altered itself randomly and the boat heading up towards the wind, which we thought we solved by changing the faulty n2k connector, but that wasn’t the case.
Since then it has happened 4-6 times in random intervals with nothing really in common to why it happens - more than it has always been day light and it has always been somewhat calm conditions (never happened during the 40-60 hours of gale force winds with 3m waves for example).
We have managed to find that it (probably) is the calculation of the TWA in the Garmin plotter (we have a garmin system on board) that has been funky - though it is only visible on the plotter inside the boat and at the autopilot. The B&G plotter at the wheel, as well as the wind instruments from B&G, shows the correct angles and strength - while the Garmin plotter show between 200-650 knots of wind and a TWA straight ahead when the problems occur.

We think the issues started when installing the new log/depth sounder in Brest, which means it’s the calculation between boat speed and wind input from the wind sensor that isn’t working.
Now we have managed to put “use SOG as calculation for TWA and vmg” instead of boat speed everywhere and hope it will be sorted for good. One realize how easy it is to get help when the internet and phone support is available, not really the same for us here on the ocean.

Other than that it is all good on board. The kids are at 10000% energy levels again and really NEED to go running for about a week once we arrive. Our sail/sleep/eat/whateverisleftoftheday-routine works well, specifically now when the conditions has eased off and looks to be a bit calmer for the last week compared to the first.

//Exite