We set sail from Lanzarote in the Canary Islands on June 23, 2024 and had the LoveBot rig set up astern within minutes of getting underway. Immediately we knew there was something wrong! It wasn’t able to recognize a course which meant we still had some tweaking to do. The Monitor Windvane (LoveBot) self-steering system is a truly rugged piece of kit but, make no mistake about it, it must be finely tuned or it doesn’t work at all. Because our Monitor sits so far off our Norwegian stern, working on it while underway posed some serious problems. The cool thing about being in an island chain in the middle of the ocean is that there are plenty of bolt-holes to drop the hook for emergency repairs or adjustments. About 35nm from our anchorage off Lanzarote was a very nice little cove tucked into the island of Fuertaventura, one island west of Lanzarote. We made very little to-do about the fact that this was the first time we’d sailed west in well over a year but we did have a few other things on our minds. We put the hook down in a lovely (although rolly) little cove called Pozo Negro (Black Sands) and went to work on fine-tuning the LoveBot the very next morning. It took us about an hour to get LoveBot dialed in but we made the mistake of looking at the 10-day on Windy! I (James) have been grumbling about that stupid app for a few months now because, for me, it seems to be a little too much information with totally scary graphics to illustrate their predictions. Now granted, weather tech has exploded in accuracy the last few years with Elon’s lower orbit bombardment of high albedo telescope distortion but at some point a sailor[…]
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