Friday, March 31, 2023

Hilton Head Island: installed

 


The Pelagic tiller pilot is installed.  

Three 1.5” thick, 4.5” long. 2” wide pieces of StarBoard custom cut at little cost, arrived yesterday.  6” bolts had arrived two days earlier.

I biked to GANNET a little before nine and was back home by noon, having used two of the pieces of StarBoard above deck to create a riser to level out the tiller arm, and one below deck as a backing plate.

As is to be expected this production Pelagic is better finished and more refined than the prototype I used during much of the circumnavigation.  It consists of three parts, two of which you can see in the photo above:  the tiller arm, which Pelagic calls the acutator, and the control box.  The control box is said to be waterproof and can be mounted on deck as I have done.  I have observed that there is waterproof and there is GANNETproof, which is a much higher standard only exceeded by that of submarines one of which she often resembles.  Yet I live in hope.  Quite illogically.

In looking at the photo I see the dangling cord between the tiller arm and the deck plug.  Underway I will place that in the line bag.

The third part of the system is the drive box which is located below deck.

Behind the Pelagic are the two new Solbian solar panels.  Also installed and working.  I have had a productive two weeks.








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