Breakdown

Every good sea story starts with “And there we were…” Well,,, and there we were sailing across the Albemarle Sound when I heard a loud ‘clunk’ in the rear steering area. “Anna, would you come up, we have an emergency” I yelled. The large chain sprocket that our autopilot uses to drive the steering system had fallen off. The area is a tight squeeze to start with and with the boat rolling it was no fun to climb down into the seat to replace sprocket. After much sweat, grease all over my hands and a bit of cursing I finally got the sprocket onto the drive shaft and locked back into place. Anna had to hand steer the Goose during this interval. She sure was glad to have the autopilot repaired and back on line when I was done!