Monthly Archives: February 2014

Raymarine received our autopilot on Monday and we waited anxiously for news from the technician. Finally on Tuesday we got an email with three photos of a multimeter, and a message from the tech that he powered it up, put a meter on it and it works fine. No it doesn’t, I fired back. He said the problem must be with the motor, which is still installed on EV. I told him that Ben Brown of Shafer and Brown, their own certified Raymarine technician, had thoroughly checked the motor and the rest of the system and declared the brain not working. The tech said he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. We have just entered my worst nightmare.

I admit I lost it. I broke down and sobbed and sobbed with the frustration of knowing our equipment was completely ferkochte with confirmation from a company man, yet the company shrugs and says the problem is elsewhere and not with the equipment. I calmed myself down a little and called my contact in the warranty office who had been very helpful at the beginning of the process but who was getting less and less responsive as the solution got more and more remote. I got voicemail but it didn’t matter. I whined our whole story again, barely able to contain my tears, and reiterated that their own trained technician couldn’t get the pilot to perform properly and now their in house technician tells me there’s nothing wrong with it. What am I to do? Can we have our money back? How can they treat us this way? I hung up, feeling that familiar surge through my body of blood pressure rising. This can’t be happening.

About a half hour later we got an email from the technician. He would replace both units with new product, but he made it clear that he found nothing wrong with the equipment. I wrote back and begged him to make sure the shipment went out that day and by nightfall we had a tracking number.

And now we wait. Again.

I was Skyping our son Drew and told him Raymarine was replacing the pilot.

“How did you manage that?” He texted.

“I cried.”

“Doesn’t work so well for men.”

Well, I didn’t do it on purpose, that’s for sure.

Substitute a ‘t’ for the ‘p’, of course.

Thank goodness we’re in Puerto Rico where it’s way easier to send things off to America. Except that we don’t have a car anymore. We dinghied over to the little fishing club next to the yacht club because the yacht club wants to charge $10 per person per day (!) and we refuse to pay that. Luckily the little fishing club is perfectly happy to let us tie up to their dock for free. The guy we met on the dock, though, told us we’d be better off taking the dinghy over to the other side of the harbor and tying up to the police dock where we’d be much closer to the post office. So we got back in the dinghy, rode over to the police dock where a friendly but heavily armed homeland security officer told us that no, we couldn’t tie up there, and also it wasn’t safe to tie up anywhere along that shoreline. Hmmm. He directed us to another tiny marina we’d barely noticed and said the owner is an American and very nice.

When we got to that marina a tall man with a Texas accent invited us to tie up and said he was about to drive in our direction and offered us a lift. His name is David and he’s a cameraman so we had lots to talk about as we drove and drove and drove and we got happier and happier that we weren’t walking this.

At the post office we packed up the autopilot and the clerk promised us it would get to New Hampshire on Monday. As soon as it was out of my hands my stress level went down a couple hundred points and we ambled our way back towards the boat, stopping in various stores along the way. We wanted to hook up with my cousin Jackie so we searched for a place we could email him from and that he could find easily. We settled on a Burger King, not my favorite place but it was on an easy corner. We got lunch and I fired off an email.

Why don’t we have a cell phone, you ask? Good question. This has been the bane of our cruising existence and we still haven’t sorted it out yet. At a couple of islands we bought local SIM cards for one of our unlocked phones, and we did the same when we flew back to Miami. But the phone that takes the regular size SIM died and we’re left with two unlocked iPhone 4s that take the miniSIMs. Those you can’t pick for cheap in the corner store. There are plenty of phone companies here but they all want a contract which of course we can’t do. We’ve explained our dilemma countless times whenever we see a phone kiosk but everyone just shrugs and says they can’t help us. So we have no phone. Or rather we have two phones we can’t use. Other cruisers seem to have worked this out with no problem, so we’re open to suggestions.

Anyway, we ate lunch at Burger King but didn’t hear back from Jackie so we continued on our way back toward the boat. As we got close to the Caribe Mall we recognized a little cafe we’d stopped at during the weeks we were in Salinas and had a car. Just as we walked past I heard someone calling, “Marce!” and there was my cousin Jose at the cafe door, looking quite surprised, as were we. He and his dad Jackie were having coffee and invited us to join them. They said they knew we were at Burger King and wished they could have gotten a message to us because the cafe is so much better and we agree. We just didn’t realize how close we’d been and you know how things look different on foot than they do from a car.

We had coffee and then drove back to the funeraria with them where we met another of Jackie’s kids, Jose’s older brother Gury.

Jackie gave us a lift back to our dinghy at David’s marina. Now we just have to wait for Raymarine to pass judgement on our autopilot. It’ll be a long weekend.

Somehow hiking in a rainforest didn’t communicate mud, muck, and mire to my brain. I mean no one said let’s voluntarily slog through sucky mud with ankle spraining rocks on trails barely a foot wide while climbing up the steep side of a mountain in the rain. Serves me right for saying sure to a couple of younger guys who wanted a spot of hiking on a lovely Wednesday morning. I’m thinking carved walking sticks, mile markers, maybe even lederhosen and with a cold beer and mountain view as a reward at the end.

George, a fellow Manta guy, had a car and knew how to get to the El Yunque National Rainforest Park two hours north of Ponce. About a kilometer shy of the park, the road was blocked with traffic barriers and our decidedly limited Spanish wasn’t much help deciphering its warning. John on Bad Bunny said he thought it said something about an avalanche up ahead. Yep, part of the nicely paved park road had caved in under the edge of the pavement. We’ll walk if it’s all the same.

As we sauntered toward the entrance of the park we could hear water thundering out of sight down in the valley hidden by the crazy profusion of giant ferns flowers, and all manner of trees.

Stopping at nicely terraced pavilions with picnic tables we gobbled our sandwiches and were confronted with more warning signs. When asked, John said the sign had something about a challenging trail, as he fine tuned his carbon fiber hiking stick. Yes but…I trailed off as he bounded up the steep slippery entrance to the trail.

By the time Marce and I summited the twenty foot high mud slide, only a down payment, it began to rain again, the boys were gone. Never mind, it felt like we had entered an alternate universe where the rules of horticulture had gone remarkably mad and no longer applied to a new and wonderful world, dripping with water, moss, massive rocks and decaying organic material like a thick steaming matt hiding ice slick mud rocks and other stuff that I’d like not to think about. I mean do they have quicksand here? Anyone? Let’s see, is it, don’t panic, don’t struggle, someone might throw you a rope? Hey Marce do you have a rope?

Really, we definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore. This place has a decidedly beautiful Primordial vibe to it, as if the competition to survive would cause things…maybe unseen things…to begin to move towards you if you paused a little too long on the trail. I had to concentrate so closely on my footing that I could only look around occasionally or risk losing my balance and the drop off was a serious concern. It felt like at any moment a rock could turn or mud might squish out from under your foot or you could just plain lose you balance and simply disappear.

The boys waited for us at what we surmised was the summit. We have to guess because of the massive organic growth blocks any hope of a view. I asked George, “where’s my view?” He looked disappointed. It happens.

You’d think going back down would be easier and it was but it brought its own challenges like you really don’t want to build up any momentum what with the rocks, steamy mud and possible quicksand…I’m just saying, but any resistance to the buildup of speed instantly sent your mud caked feet squishing out from under you which soon saw us hurtling out of control down the mountain with a good head of steam up, looking for all the world, as Bill Bryson says, like George Maharis in West Side Story.

We unintentionally arrived back at the beginning of the trail before the guys did. They’d found a mountain stream and had a swim which would have been nice but we felt it was better to get down off the mountain with the same number of limbs we were born with.

We walked right into the stream beside the pavilions which by this point was more like a river and tried to scrub the mud off our shoes. That may take some time.

The walk back to the car was punctuated by the sound of eight squishing feet. I assure you dear escapees that the back seat of the little KIA rental never felt so good. We’ll all sleep well tonight…as a matter if fact, I just might get in a little practice right now.

On this evening of rare gentle breezes with easily a half dozen bands playing and singing all around Ponce Harbor, I can’t put my anger behind me and just enjoy the cacophony of rhythms and sound. I wish I were clever enough to record this so that you could hear how wonderful all this is.

Another Manta owner posted a query asking fellow owners if Raymarine’s new Evolution autopilot works as well as they say it does. Marce wrote back that while we’ve owned ours for three months, we still don’t know how well it works.

I’m sure you Escapees remember that we jumped off the fiscal cliff in Trinidad after hand steering Escape Velocity all the way there from Grenada. The old B & G autopilot and I would never be on the same boat again, and this is after spending something well north of a full boat unit on fixing the damn thing. We did due diligence and researched as best we could and decided on a brand new Raymarine Evolution autopilot. The thing features a pocket sized frizbee looking dohicky instead of a compass, I guess it’s a kind if potentiometer so it can accurately measure the sea state. I have an app on my phone that does that!

We were careful to hire a Raytech guy (let’s agree to call him Jim) to do the install because it’s tricky to get our old B & G network to work with the new stuff and there’s always warranty fine print. Jim stayed with it and ultimately did a nice job and we figured we’d fine tune the settings as we learned the new system. After we splashed EV the autopilot seemed to have a few quirks but we really were facing a bit of a learning curve. It went down hill from there, progressively getting more bipolar every time we went to sea. Its favorite trick is what I dub “the fade” which is just an imperceptible drift off course until you suddenly realize that it’s heading home…and that’s the UK! This thing has quite a sense if humor too. It sets off an off course alarm which sends crew running only to find that the joke’s on you, for the rare moment it’s right on course. Its other favorite trick is to completely ignore attempts to adjust course by pushing the + or – buttons. Maybe it’ll do it, maybe it’ll go the other way; you never know how it will respond. It has quite a bag of tricks, but I digress.

First up, Fraito ace rigger at Ponce Sailing Center showed up and did even more than we asked on EV’s rig while showing us the fine points and tuning everything.

After Fraito finished doing a masterful job re-rigging EV I figured we’re on a roll so I had confidence another company with a good reputation — let’s call them Schafer & Brown — would fix our autopilot. What could go wrong? Well, I guess it starts with the usual litany of complaints, promises of calls, emails, missed appointments, and Nurse Ratched at the front desk. Finally they show up boatside with matching S & B polo shirts and luggage on wheels. They won’t listen to our carefully explained problems with “Uncle Ray”. Marce handed them a list of our installed components with software versions and told them the “brain” of the system was due for an update. Ben Brown ignored it, stuck the paper in his binder, zeroed in on a faulty installation then spent several hours trying in vain to find a mistake in Jim’s work. Frustrated, they looked up and with a surprised expression said it must be something else.

It was about at this point I said to Marce that I’m sure glad we’re not paying for this…hey what do these guys make per hour for rediscovering the wheel? They wouldn’t say anything and the promised email with their rate card never was sent.

After lunch Ben Brown announced triumphantly that he had checked with Raymarine on the phone and the brain is due for a software update. Didn’t we say that three hours ago?

It was time for the ever-popular sea trial. I was really afraid “Uncle Ray” would realize that it was time to behave but it did its heading-for-the-barn routine and after another hour or so, a complete reset and multiple attempts to “adjust” the pilot — come to think of it, about quitting time — both guys looked at me with that earnest look in their eyes and said it must be defective. I said oh, with what I thought was an equally earnest look. They said it needed the software update and that they would get the pilot working but it would take a lot of time and money. What? With a 3-year warranty?

It’ll have to go back. BACK? Yeah, back to New Hampshire for the software update and how would you like to pay for today’s on boat service and shipping? You must be joking, it’s three months old, installed by a Raytech guy, and has never worked properly!

I may have lost my temper with Nurse Ratched.

Frantic calls and emails to Raymarine headquarters ensued. Tech support told us a software update would not account for the behavior we described and it sounded defective to them. They assured us we are not on the hook for the on-boat service if Mr. Jim is really a Raytech guy but they convinced me that I wasn’t going to win the shipping cost argument. I’m a reasonable man and I like to think I can pick my battles and as much as it rankles, I will rise above this one.

As expected S & B has resigned as our factory representatives here in Ponce, with a terse kiss off email, not smelling much profit in it, which leaves us with a semi factory install — yes, Mr Jim lied about that Raytech thing — half an auto pilot winging its way to N. H. and half still in EV and many thousands of dollars poorer, and no one to reinstall what ever Raymarine sends back to us.

In the words of Procol Harem…I’ll blacken their Christmas, I’ll piss on their doors and they’ll cry out for mercy but still there’ll be more.

It’s going to take a little while.

We drove into Ponce on Saturday to chase down Fraito, the celebrated rigger everyone knew and recommended. We found his shop but couldn’t find the entrance. There was a man outside walking around the building and he asked if he could help. We’re looking for Fraito, we told him and he held out his hand. “That’s me!” What a stroke of luck. We told him what we needed and that we already had the rigging. He thought for a minute, checked his schedule on his mobile, said he could do it on the following Wednesday and could we bring the boat to Ponce? Of course! He told us to talk to the yacht club about tying up to the fuel dock while he worked.

The yacht club wouldn’t let us through the gate but the guard gave us a phone number to call. No one answered. I sent out an email to my cousin Jackie who I knew was a member of the club and between him and Fraito and another friend of Jackie’s we learned via email within a day that the way was cleared and we had permission to tie up to the fuel dock. Then on Monday we got a message from Fraito that he could start the job on Tuesday if we could get the boat to Ponce by noon.

We made our final provisioning rounds and took the rental car back and raised anchor Tuesday morning for the twenty mile sail around to Ponce. We settled in for a relaxing couple of hours only to find that the autopilot, which had become increasingly balky, now won’t hold a course at all. Jack handsteered the entire way which even in daylight in relatively good conditions is exhausting. We are now officially furious that we have a brand new autopilot that works worse than the one we replaced.

We entered Ponce harbor just before noon to find my cousin Jackie on the fuel dock waiting to catch our docklines. Good thing, too, because there is a terrible surge at the dock and it took a little doing to get Escape Velocity secured. I looked up at the mast and wondered how Fraito would do up there with the boat lurching and banging against the concrete dock.

We invited Jackie aboard and chatted for a while, then he took us to lunch at the yacht club. Fraito eventually got there about four o’clock eager to get started. We discussed the job and I suggested that if he did the running backstays first he could use them to support the mast while he did the rest. He agreed with that and I confessed that I hadn’t been able to do the splicing in the new Dyneema line for the backstay uppers because I didn’t have the right size fid, a tool you need to do rope splicing. No problem, he just sat on the dock and spliced up the line while I watched. Dyneema is a new kind of rope that is stronger than steel but very lightweight and easy to splice. We’re glad we chose to replace the backstays with it. It’ll give us a lot of confidence in the strength of our rig when we sail downwind.

Splicing done, Fraito went up the mast, inspected all the fittings and within minutes had our backstays and new diamond stays installed. By that time it was getting dark so he quit for the day. It was a nasty night tied up to the surging dock; EV much prefers to be at anchor and so do we.

Wednesday Fraito came back to finish up and we were amazed that he rigged the running backstays to the side cleats, then completely disconnected the shrouds, the heavy wires that hold the mast up on the sides, which we were replacing. That meant the mast was being supported by the headstay and two lengths of this new stronger-than-steel Dyneema only 1/4″ thick. Friato then went up the mast and changed both shrouds at once, completely confident in the strength of the new Dyneema backstays. That made us feel even better about that decision.

Fraito had Jack move him up and down the mast, from the very top where the backstays are attached, to the points below that where the shrouds and diamonds are attached, to the spreaders where he reattached the repaired boots. He checked everything over a couple of times and finally came down to the deck.

Meanwhile two technicians from the local Raymarine dealership came aboard to fix the autopilot. Before I had two words out they announced that our problems were likely faulty installation and they proceeded to spend a couple of hours chasing every wire through the boat. We were glad Kris had already done that and labeled everything while she was at it because I’m sure it saved a lot of time.

Eventually Ben Brown told us the installation was correct and announced that after lunch we would take the boat out to sea trial and he would get it working properly. By this time he was convinced the issue must be interference of the sensor from nearby metal objects. He moved the sensor out of its installed location away from any wires then went to lunch.

Fraito returned from lunch first and proceeded to tune the new rig. He was methodical and meticulous and we’re happy with the results, not just for the quality of his work and the care he took but because he worked with our schedule even though he was in the middle of preparing a couple of racing boats for a regatta over the weekend.

We have now replaced nearly all of the standing rigging, reusing only a couple of fittings that are in fine shape, and most of the running rigging. We still have two halyards to replace and the jib sheet. Everyone we spoke to agreed that while our rigging was fine and well under its safe life expectancy we were wise to replace it before we embark on our Pacific journey.

As Fraito was wrapping up Ben Brown described to me the maneuvers he would do on EV to show how the autopilot worked. Sharp turns to the compass points, he said, and he told me the pilot would steer just to that point and not oversteer. No it won’t, I told him, and I was finally allowed to describe the behavior of the pilot to him. He listened skeptically and said he’d have to see that for himself. By this time I was having to bite my tongue hard to keep from blowing up. I don’t know if he’s this dismissive with men too, but he was sure disrespectful towards me, in a quiet I-know-so-much-more-than-you way.

We’ve experienced this often with workmen, where they have no interest in listening to you describe the problem but come aboard convinced they know what’s wrong with your equipment and proceed to waste your time and money going down their own rabbit hole and not doing a damn thing to actually address the problem. They may eventually get there but it’d be so much better if they’d just listen first. Ben had swayed me because of his confident air and calm demeanor. But dammit, we’ve lived with a deteriorating pilot for months and can accurately describe it’s behavior in our sleep. But he had no interest in listening until he got to his own dead end and couldn’t find a problem. He was sure that the sea trial would show that we just didn’t know what we were doing.

Since I was getting annoyed with Ben and since Fraito needed to be paid and since the surge at the dock meant someone would have to catch the lines when EV came back in, I told Jack he could take Ben out by himself and I’d wait on shore to help tie up when they came back. I needed a break.

Our shipping agent Miami Mimi emailed us our airbill and our new rigging was due to arrive at the airport in San Juan on Friday. We drove up from Salinas but as we entered the airport property the full disadvantage of our lack of Spanish became apparent as we didn’t know the word for “freight” and none of the signs made it obvious where we should go. We were clearly in the passenger part of the airport. We saw a police cruiser at the terminal and I jumped out of the car with our airbill and asked if they could direct us to the right place. They looked at the paper, exchanged a few words, then shrugged and said, “Follow us.” And with that we had a police escort to Amerijet, the carrier our shipper uses. We’d’ve never found it on our own.

We had no problems picking up the rigging, a nice contrast to the PITA hurdles we jumped in Grenada. One signature and a couple of guys drove the 96-lb package right to the car and lifted it into the trunk.

It was hard to believe that five heavy wire stays, two halyards and two backstay control lines were in those two boxes, but there you go.

We’d made arrangements to meet two more of my cousins while we were in the San Juan area. They are older ladies and they were convinced we’d never be able to find an address if we met them at one of their homes so they insisted we meet in the handbag department at JC Penney’s in the Plaza las Americas, the largest mall in the Caribbean. We got there at the appointed time and waited for twenty minutes or so, watching everyone arriving and wondering what they looked like. All we knew is that the older one uses a cane.

Jack and I wandered around in our own surveillance patterns until finally he hurried over to me. “I think they’re here!” Sure enough, two older women were arriving at the store entrance. I ran over to hold the door and we smiled and hugged and all talked at once. I asked if they really wanted to shop for a handbag and they laughed and Betty said there was a small cafe on the top floor of Penney’s where we could sit and talk. Turns out she worked as an interior designer for Penney’s for many years until she retired.

When we got settled at the cafe we got down to the business of getting to know each other and filling in some of the blanks in the family tree. They had brought photos of their families and I had them write down some names and dates for me to enter into the tree later.

Betty and Tony are first cousins to each other and they have an easy familiar relationship. They both speak excellent English but when they disagreed on family history details they bickered in Spanish until they came to an understanding, then they announced the conclusion to us in English. Jack and I laughed and laughed and so did they. It was a delightful afternoon and we made plans to meet again when we got our rig sorted out.

We had a long drive back to Salinas over the beautiful interior of this island that I call one of my ancestral homes. Tomorrow we’ll talk to the rigger. Tonight I’ll type in all these new names and dates and watch my family tree grow.