Friday 19th March 2010

The boat started doing weird things today – like steering us in a circle! Looks like the autohelm is stuffed. When the rudder is straight it registers it at 20 degrees to Port therefore anything over 10 degrees to Port it thinks is maximum steerage (set at 30 degrees). In heavier weather (as we’ve had the last few days) and on certain tacks it seems to work but it appears that Hawaii lies on the wrong tack... We’re not sure what the trade winds will bring weather-wise – will it let the autohelm work? Otherwise it will mean a LOT of hand steering...

All in all though things are good and we’ve hit some nice water and sunny weather. Everything would be awesome if the damn autohelm worked. Going to make an already long trip feel a lot longer if we have to hand steer the whole way but what can we do? Have to deal with it and get it looked at in Hawaii.

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Dolphins! About 10 of them joined us for about 20 minutes. They are different to the dolphins we get in Australia – a bit smaller and dark gray and white/light grey in colour. When we saw the first one for a second we both thought ’baby killer whale’, followed by ‘if so, where is mummy killer whale...??’. Soon saw the others though and were happy they were just dolphins. Took some photos, mostly unsccessful...

But got 1 or 2 with dolphins in them. They are quick!

I quite like dolphins – they aren’t big enough to sink us...!!