And then it's clicked off a couple of times into standby and I put it back
into auto. Next thing you know the autopilot switches off completely and we
also lose our GPS.
Good morning everyone! Today is the day we are departing Kas Harbour and heading off on our 7-day
shakedown cruise to Kekova. So things are a little bit haphazard and not shipshape
onboard A B Sea at the moment, Aannsha's just getting some lines out because we're
gonna be setting up some slip lines
Morning! It's a bit exciting.
Kind of adrenalin pumping exciting!
So the lines that are happening here we've
got our aft mooring line which goes to the spring we're gonna swap those out
for slip lines. Once we've done that we can then release these midship lines and
stow them away - not important anymore. Up forward we've got too lazy lines we're
gonna drop one of those now and then we're going to ease the other one so we
can ease the boat back so we can still get on and off with the passerelle when
we need to still do some things on shore
Well this is it, after five months of being in Kas Harbour we have prepped the boat
all morning and yesterday and we're just about to cast off the lines. We're
about an hour behind schedule, the wind has arrived as promised by
Windy and we should get a good sail in here today. Excited and nervous at the
same time. Two things left to do, we've got to put away the passerelle and bring the
dinghy round to the davits and raise it up on the davits.
All right stand by on the
slime line
Are you ready? All right let it go and tell me when it's gone
A quick check of Windy showed us that we'd get some fairly decent wind on the way
down and it wouldn't take too long to get there. Our planned stop for the
first night was on the outside of Kekova Island in a tiny little Bay that was
well protected from all sides.
What are your thoughts captain? Well it's very
unnerving not having a wind speed indicator. All we've got is the white caps on the
water to give us some indication of what the wind the speed is that right now I
would say it was probably around about maybe 15 knots.
So what we're going to do is, we're only doing three knots
through the water with the mainsail so we'll get our big powerful head sail out
and get some more oomph, get some more oomph that's a technical term. Yeah
Well we were sailing nicely downwind when all of a sudden the new autopilot
clicked into standby mode by itself so I clicked it back to auto and then it did
a strange recalibration and came on to an exact heading compass heading that
the compass says we were heading and then it's clicked off a couple of times
into standby and I put it back into auto.
Next thing you know the autopilot
switches off completely and we also lose our GPS so this is why shakedown cruises
are very important. We're just close to Kekova and so we've rethought our
plan but we're just going to go inside the protection of the island
here through a cut, I mean I've been here through here before so this should be
right I can see the depths on the chart and I know which bit I'm heading for but I
have now actual true depth reading so we're gonna get in there we're gonna
drop anchor and we're gonna try and sort things out.
So we've come inside Kekova
island we're now heading into the wind which is going from the west southwest
Erm, the GPS is kicking in and out intermittently but
only staying on for seconds, er we do have depth I was wrong before we didn't have
depth because we were too deep and it wasn't reading at all but now we're in
shallower water we do have depth so that's good so we'll head up to the western end
of here, we'll drop anchor. We'll make make everything good and then
we'll investigate what we can with the GPS yeah.
Oh fun times, ey! Oh yeah!
All right we're dropping it now in seven metres so drop it now seven meters and
then drop out thirty metres
All right let it settle
All right let's get this boat put to bed and see what we can find the problem
Gotta love boating ey?
It's now day two of our shakedown cruise to Kekova and we're
in the same place as we were yesterday afternoon when we anchored, we spent the
night here. This morning I emptied out a locker and got access to the to seatalk
cables that feed into the back of the autopilot the ST 6002 from Raymarine now
both of those cables were firmly connected and we know that there's power
to that circuit because our log speed indicator is also on the same circuit
breaker and it's working fine. There is no display at all on the LCD screen of
the auto pilot so we're going to assume that it is cactus there's no on/off
switch on that particular model you just power it on and it comes on and goes
instantly into standby modes. So I disconnected both of the seatalk cables
and then powered on everything else all of the other navigation systems and hey
presto everything booted up perfectly and we had a normal GPS feed and we've
left it on for it's going to be close to four hours now and it's been steady and
constant it's not been dropping out at all. So the good news is we do have GPS
the bad news is it looks like our pre-loved Raymond marine ST 6002 is
cactus and it only lasted less than half a day.
There is more bad news. Oh you
thought that was going to be easy didn't you?
No, the other bad news is that apparently we are not transmitting an
AIS signal. We are receiving AIS because we got proximity warnings when we
left Kas Harbour but were not transmitting so when I checked our
reported position our last reported position was a hundred and eighty five
days ago doing five point eight knots leaving the Greek island of Ios. So
we'll have to look into that as well.
It's a never-ending bag of fun!
Luckily, we can manage for a while without an autopilot because most of our trips are
going to be short day hops and of course now that we have Hand onboard we do have
someone to help us with the helming. Don't we Hand?
It's a bit exciting today because we're going to drop the dinghy and we're going
to motor over to the little bay behind us. Apparently there's about a 30 minute
walk and it will take us to some ruins so we're really looking forward to
seeing what we discover.
It's quite an easy walk it's very flat, just got to be
careful you don't stumble over any rocks or get entangled with too many cows on a
narrow path they do tend to back off but they are big animals
I think if it says, if there's a red cross rather than a red line
I think that means don't go this way coz
when we went that way that was when we discovered more cows
Oh, but this one can't read signs. No.
I've just discovered some wild oregano. It's lovely and I think if that's what I think
it is, it's sage. Oh my god that's yummy!
This is why the cows come up here ... Well not here
So we've just had a very interesting and exciting scramble down through the ruins and I'm
going to guess and we're right down to the water's edge now and this is a
beautiful place don't get me wrong but unfortunately I've just come to the
water's edge and humanity's footprint awaits me. It's really sad to see this
but you know I guess this happens. We're very aware of plastic usage and you know
people say oh you go onto the beach and make sure you pick up three pieces of
plastic every day I don't really think that's going to be a tenable solution I
think the only way to do it is to come up with something that's an alternative
to plastic that just biodegrades after a time. I think I've read somewhere that
they can make water bottles out of a plastic made of hemp which biodegrades
after 80 days I think. We've just got to stop producing plastic. It's it's
ridiculous.
It just makes me so sad.
A big thank you to our new patrons
who've jumped on board. Ken Smith who's one of our longtime followers and Dope Box
thank you guys it's great having you aboard. And if you enjoyed this video
don't forget to give us a thumbs up it really does help us out and subscribe
and hit the bell icon so that you get notified of future videos.
Hey Baz
That rock's cactus
She's a funny girl