This is the day we have been waiting for,  the one where we actually start our shakedown cruise with all the absolutely required systems installed.  The last big installation was the Cape Horn and we get to try it out as we cross to Catalina before heading down to Dana Point on Friday.

At first the Cape Horn (CH) was a complete mystery.  We can’t get it to steer Senta reliably no matter how we change settings.  It takes us quite a while before we realize that a combination of flakey weak winds and confused seas is just too much for the CH to handle.  The wind down at the vane level was almost completely unrelated to the wind at the masthead.  In those conditions it would be impossible for any vane at near cockpit level to steer even if we humans could steer and sail passably by looking up at the windex.

We have a TillerPilot that we will install for no-wind situations like that.  The TillerPilot will serve the same purpose as the CH vane and tell the CH paddle how to turn the rudder,  but do so on a magnetic setting rather than by wind direction.  The advantage of using the TillerPilot over a standard autopilot is that the tiller pilot draws very little power and using it with the CH lets us use the power of the CH paddle to drive the rudder rather than using an autopilot ram for all the power.

Once the sea-breeze picked up the CH started getting into its groove.  With some tweaking we started getting real confidence and a bit later we were plowing along at up to 7 knots close hauled in 15 knot winds (relative).  The video above really doesn’t do the performance justice but this was great hands-off sailing with no electric consumption.

We kept looking down in the aft lazarette to see how the lines and blocks were doing,  dreading any possible chafing or flexing of either our mounts or the auto pilot mounts that we had reenforced.  Nothing seemed amiss and even the rather forceful steering in bigger swells seemed to be no problem at all.

The wind picked up enough to give us a heel of 15 to 20 degrees,  almost time to reef,  but it settled down a bit and we kept full canvas until we got into the wind shadow of Catalina.  The last 3 miles we powered but we were very very happy with the CH.  Of course,  once we were inside the Venturi of the Isthmus the wind picked up again !

Stowing the CH when we turned on the engine was not a problem.  We had worried that it might be a two-person operation but it turned out to be relatively straight forward and the green bungie cord holding the paddle up out of the water might not be a fashion statement,  but it will do until we get something more stylish set up.

We are getting ready to really do this  !