CONFESSION FROM FALMOUTH
Hi Peter,
I feel the need to make a confession.
I was very hesitating to deploy the windpilot. Due to all the horror stories one reads about people having a lot of difficulties to use their equipment properly (not windpilot, but generally).
Some people advised me to wait for a longer passage, so I would have the time, day all day, to fiddle around. Therefore I waited for our journey to Spain, to have time to deploy it correctly.
Well, yesterday we made an unsuccesful attemt to leave. Hard south wind, so we returned to Falmouth at the end of the day.
But I took my chance in deploying the windpilot and oh boy, do I regret not to have used it before. Here’s what I did:
Trimmed the sails
Trimmed the ships rudder and fixed it tight
Put the windblade in place in a way where I thought, I think it’ll be allright
Put the contraweight in the direction of the wind
Engaged the pilot by moving the clutch
Trimmed the windblade a little bit and left it as it was
The next few hours during this testdrive I did not do anything.
The only weird thing was a strange big smile on my face.
And we’re talking 25 to 32 knots of apparant wind here…..
Apologies for the little faith I had….. 😂😂😂
Kind regards,
Henk
