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Tue Feb 06, 2007
Technical difficulties
Thank you for your patience. We have been off line with techinical difficulites. Back soon.
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Sun Aug 13, 2006
They Fixed It!
When last we heard from Fin and Susan, they had autopilot problems in Columbia. I don't have to tell anyone what a burden it can be hand steering with only two crew. Here is their latest e-mail.
Hi John, we finally got the blasted, I mean blessed, autopilot working. The
suction check valves were gummed up. After we tried a number of times to
bleed the air out, we called Simrad in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia who told us to
clean the spring and balls of different valves, the big ones on the side
that you use a 14 mm wrench on. That didn't help, so back to the manual we
went. We finally realized we should remove the "grub screws" and clean those
spring and balls. The grub screws are the two set screws on the side. After
we cleaned and reassembled those we managed to bleed the air out of the pump
and lines. They didn't look dirty or gummed up, but cleaning them did the
trick. We were fairly reluctant to take the pump apart, but it went well.
Read your blog, you might be overestimating anyone's interest in our lives
but maybe not. There are so many people down here cruising that we seem
boring, but the folks back home always have lots of questions.
Our bad weather on the way to Panama consisted of winds up to 60 knots and
15 foot seas, with a very short wave period. Quite scary, but Andrea Clair
held up quite well. We did too, but after about 24 hours of no rest and a
near knockdown, we decided to heave to with a doubled reefed main and single
reefed mizzen. This gave us each about four hours of rest that we sorely
needed. We kept a watch schedule, we didn't feel comfortable without it. In
the morning we made our way to Cartagena, as it was the closest port and our
world cruising guide (Jimmy Cornell) said it was safe with reasonably good
facilities for repairs. Our memories of this 36 hours or so are fading fast,
though we do remember feeling quite battered about when we arrived.
Thanks for replying, after we ungummed the pump, we spend a long time
bleeding these lines and the pump. We'll keep you posted on our adventures,
we think the next stop is the San Blas islands off of Panama.
Regards, Susan and Fin
The crew at CYS wishes you fair winds, Susan and Fin, and may God be with you.
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Fri Aug 11, 2006
This Just in From Columbia
I've started receving e-mails from my old customers and friends, Fin and Susan Sutherland, who are out there following their dream aboard the "Andrea Clair", a 1985 43' Roberts 22 ton steel ketch. Here's what they had to say.
We had a pretty good passage down to St. Thomas in the fall of 2004, motored a lot as we had no wind or wind in our face. Had some engine trouble just before arrival and ended up having the engine rebuilt in St. Thomas.
We decided we weren't quite ready to leave the Caribbean and ended up in
Trinidad for the summer of 2005 which was a so-so experience. In the fall we
worked our way up the island chain to St. Thomas again to visit friends and
had a good early winter. We then decided to head for Panama and the trip to
Canada. Had a wonderful sail for a week or so, got some horrendous advice
from Commander weather and ended up in unbelievably bad weather. We decided
to put in at Cartagena for "minor" repairs. Discovered upon arrival that the
wind and waves had stripped about half of our topsides paint off, probably
when we were hove to for a night. So haulout, painting, etc.
At that point, we had lost our schedule to Canada, which really was no problem, so we flew
home for the summer and just got back last week. We have enjoyed Colombia, the people here are very warm and friendly. Not much of a yachting industry here, but it looks like that could change.
Right now, we are trying to get back in the water. The autopilot is giving
us some grief right now but has worked perfectly until this hose blew. We
will keep working on it, hopefully all will come together today.
How is everything with you? Is it as hot as ever on the Chesapeake? We would
probably cope better with the heat now than we did when we were there.
Thanks again, we will let you know how it goes.
Fin and Susan
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Fri Jul 14, 2006
The Generator
The genset is purring like a kitten.
After checking all the hose clamps (double below the water line), the filters, the fuel hoses, and the electrical connections, we held our breath and hit the start button. She started on the first try and ran without so much as a hiccup. That was due partly to the priming option on the Next Generation genset. Shorting two contacts on the terminal strip allowed up to run the electric fuel pump until the diesel flowed through the genset and back into the tank.
So the whole project was a total success.
Read More...
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