No Autopilot in the Middle of the Ocean || Sailing SV Goat ep 119

We sailed our Lagoon 400 catamaran 269.9 nautical miles from Madeira to La Graciosa in the Canary Islands, and the autopilot died on the first night. The plan sounded great: a day and fourteen hours, a beam reach, two shipping corridors to cross, a metre and a half to two metres of sea. Four hours in, the preventer on the bowsprit broke — a part I bought in Portugal that, it turns out, is made of plastic. No code zero, no wind, motor-sail. At half past nine at night the autopilot switched itself off. I found a loose negative on the controller, decided that was it, and went to sleep. It was not it. The blonde and Sasha hand-steered through the night, keeping the moon in front of the boat. At one o'clock the next afternoon we were still fighting it. With help over the phone from the electronics shop that sold us our Furuno gear, the new theory was voltage: the autopilot was dropping to eight volts for a second and shutting down. So we borrowed the power line from the deck-wash pump, ran it to the autopilot, and switched it on. Forty-three hours after leaving Madeira, at six in the morning and still dark, we arrived at La Graciosa. CHAPTERS 0:00 A very long night 0:19 The plan sounds so good 1:21 Leaving Madeira 1:58 We lost the autopilot 2:36 Go back to sleep 3:11 Steering by the moon 4:37 Still fighting at 1 pm 5:34 Eight volts 6:06 The fix 6:26 It's on 7:43 Under sail again 8:19 The bowsprit part was plastic 9:19 Where are we? 10:32 First land in the Canaries Next: La Graciosa, Lanzarote, and a night where everything that could go wrong did. Follow along so you don't miss it. Filmed aboard SV Goat, a Lagoon 400 we live on full time. Vlad supervises, from the boat. #SailingLife #Liveaboard #CatamaranLife #Lagoon400 #SailboatLife #SailingVlog #Catamaran #BoatRepair #Autopilot #OceanPassage #CanaryIslands #Madeira #DIYBoat