On November 29, a little more than a month after leaving Victoria, B.C. on a planned non-stop solo circumnavigation aboard her Najad 380 Nereida, Jeanne Socrates crossed the equator. "I suddenly realized that the latitude had gone from north to south," she wrote in a blog update. "I looked at the sea — no line to be seen! But we were greeted across by the strengthening wind heeling us under cloudy skies."

Jeanne’s voyage to date seems to have been plagued more by mechanical troubles than by weather issues. Her autopilot has been acting erratically for most of the trip, and no amount of satphone calls to the manufacturer has resulted in a fix. Then yesterday, Jeanne reported that her trusty windvane had failed, leaving her with spotty-at-best self-steering.

"No wonder the wind steering has not been coping this morning — the knob holding two parts together has broken (or fallen) off, so it’s not able to keep the rudder in place for a given wind angle." She hopes to cobble together a jury rig before today is out because, at last word, her autopilot had once again started acting as if it was on crack.

But it’s not all doom and gloom aboard Nereida. In yesterday’s report, Socrates says she was finally able to make her AIS and VHF talk to each other in case of an emergency, such as an imminent collision. It’s comforting to know that this grandma won’t get run over by a freighter, but she’d better keep an eye out for reindeer — we hear Santa hasn’t installed a transponder yet!

We hate it when we make mistakes, and never more so when they reflect badly on somebody or some company. But that’s just what we did in the December issue.

We’d received a letter from Ed and Karen Lane of the San Diego-based Valiant Esprit Nordic 37 Blade, who reported that they had not been able to participate in the Ha-Ha 17 they’d signed up for because the diesel engine they had ordered on January 15 of ’10 — and were repeatedly promised would arrive shortly — did not arrive in time for them to have it installed for the October 25 start. They were very disappointed.

We noted that, because of the recession, many manufacturers, distributors, and retailers had generally cut back on inventory to reduce costs, and in some cases this was causing problems for consumers. We noted that, for example, Doña de Mallorca wasn’t able to obtain more of the the Henderson water-based deck paint she likes because they simply weren’t going to make any more in white until they got a lot more orders. And that another entry in the Ha-Ha wasn’t able to make it because the rod rigging order he’d placed months before with Navtec, which is owned by Lewmar, didn’t arrive in time.

The only problem with the last statement is that, because of a complete misunderstanding and brain fade on our part, the boat owner hadn’t ordered the rod rigging from Navtec at all. Indeed, the reason he didn’t receive it in time from the other company was, not because of a screw up on the part of the company, but because the people who placed the order on his behalf screwed up.

We’d like to say we made the error about Navtec because the information was passed on to us during the Ha-Ha Kick-Off Party in San Diego, when we had about 3,000 other things on our mind. But that’s no excuse, is it? We screwed up, and feel very badly about it. So our most sincere apologies to Navtec and Lewmar who, as yet, probably aren’t even aware of the mistake.

For the record, we’ve used Navtec products, particularly their backstay adjusters and rigging parts, for more than 30 years, and always found them to be first quality. Our 10-year-old Leopard 45 catamaran ‘ti Profligate catamaran in the Caribbean is equipped with numerous Lewmar winches, and they still look and work as if brand new. Further, we’ve got a terrific Mambo steering system that is sold by Lewmar on Profligate, and it’s been a terrific replacement for the original hydraulic steering, which never worked properly.

Once again, our sincerest apologies to Navtec and Lewmar for our blunder. We’ll try to do better in the future.