A few months ago we bought a nice new spingly, spangly Raymarine autohelm. It is designed to be our secondary autohelm to be used when under power. It looks fantastic and we were rightly very excited about it.

 

2 weeks in and the novelty has worn off. We still do not have it working. It all seemed so simple in the instructions and indeed most of it is now fitted...in fact the rudder snsor part of it has now been fitted twice and still wont work. It has become incredibly frustrating. I have glued and screwed more times than I care to think about. We have had various charter yacht captains on board for second opinions and finally I think we have a plan that may actually work! Tomorrow will be the decider. If this attermpt fails then I will part with hard earnt cash to get it working. Perhaps this is what I should have done in the first place!

 

Other work on the boat has gone much more smoothly. The to-do list is gradually getting smaller thank goodness. A couple of days ago I replaced all the interior lights with LED ones. These have worked out better than we ever imagined. They do not give off any heat and draw next to nothing from the batteries. The dinghy is pumped up and and working and the outboard works too, although we have been getting very into rowing it instead. Ems shad a few teething troubles to start with as we went round and round in small circles but I think she has now got the hang of it and seems to hold a vaguely straight course!