Our trip from Annapolis included the very real potential to replace the Standing Rigging. I had my mind made up to do the right thing and do this trip (Annapolis to Key West and back) with a new rig.
At some point we'd be heading off for a few days in the Gulf Stream; most likely on our return leg. Doing this with a 10 + year old rig was, in my opinion not the safest thing to do. So, here we are.
Sea Trials and Miami in sight!
After a month in Ft Lauderdale, we have a laundry list of new stuff and a much lighter bank account. Our tiller pilot (age unknown) gave up the ghost in Brunswick, GA, so we have a new Raymarine unit bought from eBay.
This is a SPX-5 tiller pilot, it sure is much nicer than the old Simrad that came with the boat. We will be able to use this tiller pilot in "track" or "windvane" mode. Making overnight ocean passages much easier. The SPX-5 came with a Course Computer, but no control head. So a few hundred dollars later, and a few scrapes and bruises we have a new p70 Autopilot Control unit.
Now we will have a second hand for those long tiresome days underway. Thankfully I think we will be able to control the tiller pilot from the e7D MFD / Plotter. As you can see here, we didn't have much room (or choice) to locate the Control Head. When the Engine is in gear and throttled up, the handle blocks the view of the Control Head display. Thankfully we'll be using it more sailing than motoring.
The Sea Trial continued with a nice sail!
Finally, with everything calibrated we tested out the Windvane mode on the new Tiller Pilot. Though it seemed a little sluggish, the tiller pilot basically kept the wind on the right side of the boat. Now all we need to do is learn to tack with the Tiller Pilot.
The rigging was initially tuned dockside, and I had some reservations about the quality of the tune. To my pleasant surprise the new rig looked great under sail, the leward shrouds barely sagging at all.
Lasata felt wonderful in 18Kts of wind.
