Well, this morning we were prepared to leave and head South for Tauranga and it was raining nicely so we sat around waiting for it to clear. By 11am we were tired of waiting so we pulled out in a light drizzle with 10k of wind. Our plan was to first motor over to the fuel dock to fill up our diesel tanks and then head out to one of the many islands in the bay and anchor for the day and wait for better wind (from the right direction).

As soon as we pulled away from the dock the captain activated the autopilot, as is the normal procedure on the Queen Jane, and to our surprise it failed to work. This was a great surprise to us since we had just had it "repaired". Last Tuesday, after arriving in Opua, we shipped it off to the Simrad dealer in Auckland for repair. They returned it on Friday and the captain installed it right away. It appeared to work fine and we were in good spirits assuming we could check that one off our list. So it was, as I said, a great surprise that it failed to operate today.

After fueling we returned to the marina and docked again. Of course, since nothing is easy in this life - and why should you expect it to be - docking the Queen Jane proved to be quite a challenge. Not only was the normal current making our lives difficult but the wind had got up to about 15k by then and we overshot the slip and had a devil of a time turning the boat around. About two dozen people watched from along both piers on either side of us as we struggled to turn the boat around. The Shannon 50 does not back easily, and only with great difficulty can you prevent the stern from walking around to Port. Finally, after much jockeying and thrusting we managed to get her turned around and into the slip.

Now we are again stuck here until the AP can be repaired. This time I am going to stress to the technicians that they are to test it more thoroughly under a wide range of input voltages. My guess is that the problem only occurs when the input voltage is above 13vdc. This is not an unusual voltage either since the way batteries are charged is by driving up the voltage to 14vdc for a period of time. In our own test at the dock Friday we never ran the engine and only 12.4vdc was coming from the batteries. Clearly the bench test performed by the technicians must have also been at or near this voltage and not at the higher voltages encountered while charging. This is, of course, only conjecture on our part and we will have to rely on the technicians to determine the true nature of the problem. We will send it down to Auckland again tomorrow (Monday) and hope for the best. Stay tuned for more news coming soon.