Any thoughts of leaving today were dampened by Coastal Wind Warnings from Point Danger to Broken Bay as a Southerly Change (with plenty of rain) heads up the coast.
Early morning in Coffs is very quiet, 5-6 knots from the SW and little sign of what is to come, but no yachts left to head South. We went for a morning walk up on Mutton Bird Island to get a view down the coast, where it looked pretty bleak, so we decided to stay put. The longer we stay here the more the timing of the tide into Camden Haven becomes an issues, as high tide moves later into the evening requiring a night crossing of the bar (not our favourite option).
Looking West over Marina from Muttonbird Island
Looking South from Mutton bird Island (visibilty limited)
A yacht motored in from the North this morning and anchored in the harbour, opting not to continue on.
Back at the yacht I decided to have another go at fixing the autopilot. I unscrewed the fluxgate compass from its mount, so I could move it around freely and attempted to calibrate it manually by rotating it through 360 degrees imitating the boat steering in a circle. To my surprise, the autopilot computer accepted the calibration. I checked the calibration parameters with Navico to ensure they were within tolerance and got the all clear.
After refixing the compass, it was still relatively mild conditions, so we decided to cast off and go out into the harbour to run the auto tune program to align the autopilot settings with the new compass calibration. A quick 360 degree turn to check there were no dead spots in the compass heading, and we headed back to the marina on autopilot, seemingly working properly. We will not know for sure until an extended use at sea, but it looks encouraging.
Back to our berth, we tied up and had lunch, then headed into town to do some shopping.
The southerly hit at about 3pm with strong winds and heavy rain. Fortunately we were back on board by then. We cooked dinner on board and the heavy rain and strong winds persisted all night.
No comments:
Post a Comment