Arrival: Monday, June 9
Kodiak, Alaska
57 47.2N / 152 24.6W
Sailed: 3035 miles (from Honolulu) VMG: 2300
As mentioned in our week 2 post, we knew we were in for a seriously long passage due to the many lengthy calms we were experiencing. In the end, we were at sea 33 days, but, here we are now, in Kodiak Alaska! The nights are very short this far north and the eagles are abundant. These pictures were taken at 9 p.m. The weather is cool, but, sunny and we are enjoying the change from a too-hot (for us) Hawaii.
The winds cooperated in week 4 and we started off making good progress. The next day an autopilot failure soon put an end to that. All of a sudden, the pump started making some strangled noises and then all went quiet. Before we left, we had purchased a new autopilot motor from England as a spare and had extra brushes custom-made for the old motor. Along with our other spares and the two fully redundant electronic course computers, fluxgate compasses and rudder reference units, we felt we were well-equipped to deal with a failure. We did some diagnostics, replaced a few parts and came to the conclusion that it must be the pump's solenoid valve, a single point of failure that we didn't have a spare for. The motor seemed to be running fine, it just didn't engage the rudder, so, we decided that replacing the motor with its spare was probably wasted effort. At this point, we just wanted to get on with it, so, decided to hand-steer the last 800 miles into Kodiak. This wasn't a trivial effort, but, we knew we'd get there eventually. When we bought this boat, it was, surprisingly, lacking a proper steering compass, so, were very glad that we had installed one.
As mentioned in our week 2 post, we knew we were in for a seriously long passage due to the many lengthy calms we were experiencing. In the end, we were at sea 33 days, but, here we are now, in Kodiak Alaska! The nights are very short this far north and the eagles are abundant. These pictures were taken at 9 p.m. The weather is cool, but, sunny and we are enjoying the change from a too-hot (for us) Hawaii.
The winds cooperated in week 4 and we started off making good progress. The next day an autopilot failure soon put an end to that. All of a sudden, the pump started making some strangled noises and then all went quiet. Before we left, we had purchased a new autopilot motor from England as a spare and had extra brushes custom-made for the old motor. Along with our other spares and the two fully redundant electronic course computers, fluxgate compasses and rudder reference units, we felt we were well-equipped to deal with a failure. We did some diagnostics, replaced a few parts and came to the conclusion that it must be the pump's solenoid valve, a single point of failure that we didn't have a spare for. The motor seemed to be running fine, it just didn't engage the rudder, so, we decided that replacing the motor with its spare was probably wasted effort. At this point, we just wanted to get on with it, so, decided to hand-steer the last 800 miles into Kodiak. This wasn't a trivial effort, but, we knew we'd get there eventually. When we bought this boat, it was, surprisingly, lacking a proper steering compass, so, were very glad that we had installed one.
We did one hour on, one hour off shifts staring at this compass card, trying to keep to our course. It was very cold in the cockpit at night. After some experimentation, we found that actually, if you balance the sails and rudder properly this boat will self-steer very well. Not all the time, mind you, but, at least you can take your hands off the wheel momentarily. We did have a couple of really long runs of self-steering. On one occasion, motor-sailing, it went overnight without us having to touch the wheel once. Such intense concentration is very tiring and we did stop a couple of times to take a rest and warm up. Our course was a little wobbly, the autopilot can steer much more accurately than we can, but, our forward progress was good.
After we got to Kodiak and pulled the pump apart, it was very obvious that the drive coupling was the problem, not the solenoid. It was just worn out. The 'lovejoy' had no teeth left, the motor was running, but, it wasn't engaging the pump. If we'd just taken a few hours to swap out the motor while at sea we wouldn't have had this hand-steering ordeal. But, looking on the bright side, we now know how to balance and sail this boat much more efficiently.
Another event occurred that slowed us down even further. Our Yankee (type of headsail) furler line snapped. We were able to quickly pull the sail down and lash it to the deck, adroitly avoiding dumping it into the water, but, this meant that we couldn't easily use one of the three sails we usually fly for optimum speed. It began to feel like we'd never get there! It was a moot point anyway as the wind soon went very light and we motored the last 130 miles into Kodiak. There was a low approaching and we didn't want to spend even one more night at sea.
Kodiak is a very busy fishing port, a working town. It does the fourth largest catch in the country, mostly salmon, which is now in season. We are in St. Paul Boat Harbor, one of two marinas which hold about 700 fishing boats. We are the only visiting sailboat. Boats are coming and going at all times of the day and night to the many canneries here in town. It's a bustling place. We'll be here for a couple of weeks at least, waiting for some boat parts to arrive. After that we'll either be on a mini-Alaskan cruise (hopefully), or, headed straight for Dixon Entrance and Canada. It all depends on whether we can extend our US visas and/or the Canada/US border opens again on June 21.
After we got to Kodiak and pulled the pump apart, it was very obvious that the drive coupling was the problem, not the solenoid. It was just worn out. The 'lovejoy' had no teeth left, the motor was running, but, it wasn't engaging the pump. If we'd just taken a few hours to swap out the motor while at sea we wouldn't have had this hand-steering ordeal. But, looking on the bright side, we now know how to balance and sail this boat much more efficiently.
Another event occurred that slowed us down even further. Our Yankee (type of headsail) furler line snapped. We were able to quickly pull the sail down and lash it to the deck, adroitly avoiding dumping it into the water, but, this meant that we couldn't easily use one of the three sails we usually fly for optimum speed. It began to feel like we'd never get there! It was a moot point anyway as the wind soon went very light and we motored the last 130 miles into Kodiak. There was a low approaching and we didn't want to spend even one more night at sea.
Kodiak is a very busy fishing port, a working town. It does the fourth largest catch in the country, mostly salmon, which is now in season. We are in St. Paul Boat Harbor, one of two marinas which hold about 700 fishing boats. We are the only visiting sailboat. Boats are coming and going at all times of the day and night to the many canneries here in town. It's a bustling place. We'll be here for a couple of weeks at least, waiting for some boat parts to arrive. After that we'll either be on a mini-Alaskan cruise (hopefully), or, headed straight for Dixon Entrance and Canada. It all depends on whether we can extend our US visas and/or the Canada/US border opens again on June 21.
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