It's twilight on deck. A cool, pleasant evening with waves lapping at the hull and a full sky of twinkling stars in the making. What's that sound not? Why…. it's NOT the engine. The winds finally made an appearance and we are actually sailing. I was beginning to wonder if we would ever see enough breeze to shake out the sails.
We've pressed the Hydrovane into service too. For the uninitiated, Hydrovane is a brand of wind vane that auto-steers the boat, but doesn't use any electrical power. Quijote also has an autopilot that uses small motors to move the rudder in response to a change in heading. The Hydrovane has it's own rudder, which it steers in respond to changes in the angle of the wind. When the boat veers off course, the autopilot corrects the heading by turning the boat's rudder, while the Hydrovane corrects the change in wind angle by turning its own rudder. Together we have redundancy of auto steering and redundancy of rudders.
We stopped in Newport this afternoon for fuel, then turned around and headed right back out. What a busy place! Boats everywhere! Docking for fuel was a learning experience. Docking in stiff wind is never easy. The winds were predicted to get cooking around Cape Mendocino, so we decided to beat them there by not making our planned Newport stop. San Fransisco here we come.
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