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Nereida’s Wind Steering Fails

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!

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