Good news and bad. The good is that my electrician has righted many an evil left behind by thirty years of bad installations of ancillary
equipment that previous owners unwittingly paid for. For instance, the masthead tricolor was wired with speaker wire (I'm not kidding). My bonding system is pristine. The added galvonic isolator is inconspicuously doing it's job. The bad news is the
autopilot. When I bought the
boat (Gulfstar 37) five years ago, it was advertised with an
autohelm 6000. The
surveyor didn't seem much concerned with it as I
recall. Being on the upper streches of a river, I never had occasion to test it out. I got dinged by a drifting
boat during tropical storm Fay and have been
on the hard for over a year and a half. Brought the boat down to St. Augustine for
repairs and we got the pilot to
work, but found it would drift. My electrician has installed many an
autopilot. Unfortunately he tells me that mine has been treated to the ol' sawdust in the
transmission trick, as I am missing a component called a
Rudder mixer I believe. Anyhow without this gizmo my pilot is incomplete and non-functional. He showed me where someone spliced some wires to make it engage the ram, making it appear to
work. He says that the good news is that the ram will work with any of the
core packs available on the market, so I'm not completely out. Since
Autohelm 6000 is ancient, I'm sure no
parts are available. Anyone have any
advice on how to proceed?