30/1/2014
We visited a couple of anchorages on the south coast before heading around the reef on the south west tip, on our way past the reef our Raymarine touchscreen GPS display went haywire. It placed a waypoint and then engaged autopilot to go to the way point, not the best of things to happen when negotiating a reef! The touchscreen wouldn’t work so we shut the system down and rebooted, then it decided to set off the man overboard AIS alarm! Another panic to get the thing switched off. We had been experiencing problems with it for a few weeks whenever the screen gets water on it (quite often in the cockpit of a boat!), it thinks it’s being touched and beeps and flicks to other screens so we have to disable the touchscreen. So the next week was spent waiting around at anchor outside Jolly Harbour for the local Raymarine agent, Signal Locker, to come and have a look, finally the engineer said it had serious problems (mm) and that he would order another screen for replacement as it was under warranty but we would need to return to English Harbour the following week to have it fitted. Whilst in Jolly Harbour we spent a great evening with Steven and Shawn from catamaran Amaris, fellow ARC+ mates, with dinner, cards and too many bottles of wine! The following day I was feeling delicate, when the guys popped by to invite us the fish and chips at the Crows Nest pub with a Pinacolada. Well, what an offer and a great cure for a hangover! We met Steve and Angela from Pannikin on the way and had another great night with some live music too. The following week we returned around the coast back to English Harbour, en route we had a phone call from Signal Locker to say that Raymarine would not replace the screen afterall, and required it back to repair in the USA. That would take a couple of weeks. We waited around for nearly two days for Signal Locker to appear to check our other equipment and after several visits to the workshop, phone calls and promised visits we decided to give up on them, hoping that leaving our screen with them to return for repair was the right thing to do. We were about to head off in search of another anchorage when Steve from Pannikin texted to say they were going to Barbuda the following day, without hesitation we decided to follow them as we were lacking in reliable equipment (the Ipad keeps overheating) so we made our way back up the West coast ready for our sail to Barbuda in the morning. |