For the first week and a half that we were in Virgin Gorda, I was full-time ten plus hour days installing our new sailing instrument system.
Why?
Well, for the last few years, we’ve been having random issues with our 20+ year-old instrument system. Now 20 years is a pretty good run, and for 99% of that time, they were rock solid 100% reliable. But, when we started having random shutdowns, display brightness fading, and ultimately an autopilot failure on the trip from Bermuda to Antigua, it was time to loosen my wallet and do the upgrade. Too many miles to sail between here and San Francisco to have anything other than reliable instruments.
I shouldn’t make this sound like too obvious of a decision. We had gotten the autopilot working again and for the month previous to starting this project, the instruments had been solid. So, it was the devil we knew or the one we didn’t. A major change like this before lots of offshore miles is generally not the right call. We shall see!!
So, it was out with the old…
And in with the new..
Much to my amazement, it all worked!! So far so good, we’ve tested and calibrated all the systems under the engine. In a day or two, we will go for a sail and see how things work then.
Morpheus Sailing 