Murph - the other one - and the Examiner

Serves me right on 2 counts - one, for feeding the old bearded bastard with the trident a drink through the cockpit drain - no doubt he was miffed and two, for not following my own rule and testing everything before going to sea on one of these gigs.

Udo fixed the very nearly dead electric autopilot and gave it new innards but as he had already tested it, I assumed it would work when we plugged it into the boat. Murphy and the Examiner contrived to jam it and as we were still so close to CT it would have been very silly old fart behaviour to keep going without it. Kevvo does not work when we are motoring unless there is a significant apparent wind not created solely by our movement through the water so having no electric thingy would mean hours - maybe days of hand steering, especially if other things had already assumed pearshapedness.

Udo has now taken it away for surgery - I hope not autopsy - and he will do his best to get us away again tomorrow. We will also set up the toy version of the autopilot that I have as backup so that it will work rather more easily than it is set up to do now (now needs alligator clips on to the battery - instead of the much easier cigarette lighter plug).

All I can say is watch this space. I will try to get copies of pics of 0500 departure for later blog if we are still here tonight.

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Seals and dolphins

Quickie to say that we left the Royal Cape YC at 0510 this morning and we're heading down towards the Cape of Good Hope. So far so good and if this goes too, then all systems including AIS seem to be working. Keep em crossed!

Seals and dolphins in cavort mode as we left the harbour. Noice. And I spilt half my first Consultative medicament on to the cockpit floor - unintentionally - so I'm living with the consequences of that woolly sock moment and I hope the Bearded One with trident is feeling libated even though it was processed via the cockpit drain.

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Quick, mini update -

Massive couple of days packing the boat and absolutely knackered! Silly old fart. We are planning to leave tomorrow at 0500ish UTC. Wish us luck and happy christmas to all y'all out there. We will hang out the decorations and Consult briefly - of course - with the reindeer and the other old fart.

I hope the next one will be from the boat.

Love yez all!