The jurney continues

Morningsong
Sun 10 May 2009 13:37

Shortly after our last update on the blog another at aprox. 3.30 pm we had another incident. The autopilot went down. The display showed a failure message; Error 103. It had done so a few times before but this time when we tried to switch it on, it immediately went down again. We took out the manual to try and find the answer to the Error message. The manual said that error 103 means that there is no indication that the rudder turns aa requested. And when we opened up the hatch we found to our big surprise that the entire hydraulic arm that turns the rudder had come of its mounting plate!!! It was lying loose on top of the steering gear. We looked at each other and said; WHAT THE ****! After a few minutes of hyperventilating we immediately started to try and figure out if it was fixable. We realized that continuing without a functioning autopilot was out of the question. Johan went down to the compartment next to the hydraulic arm and found that all 4 nuts on the bolts had come off. Since I am the inventory manager I had seen some bolts and nuts in the storage down below. I vent to try and find them and some tools that would be needed in the operation. We are lucky that Johan is a fixer and can build an engine with a coat hanger! After a few hours of sweating and praying Johan finally completed the, what I thought was going to be mission impossible, operation and I had the honor to push the ON button.  To our big releaf it worked and still works unless it not heavy rudder. For dinner we finally had Paulas stew and it tasted delicious! Thanks again Paula and Richard!

The night was quite and we took turns by 3.5h. This time we slept down below. Today we had a nice breeze of 20 kn giving us a speed of 5-6 kn. Until early aftrenoon when it became overcast with a short rain squall and reduced winds to about 10 kn which take us to where we are now, in position N 22,33,7 W 062.54.2. We have aprox. 595 NM to go before reaching Bermuda.

And now in swedish… Till vara mammor och pappor, vi mar bra och ar valbehallna. Vi lar oss nya saker varje dag vilket bara gor oss starkare! Kram pa er!