Diana and I set sail from the Canary Islands on Tuesday morning last week bound for Florida.  400 miles south of the Canary Islands our chartplotter and autopilot failed.  The nearest land was Cabo Verde, a group of islands off the coast of Africa about 450 miles away.  We hadn’t planned to stop there but suddenly it seemed like a good idea. Hand steering on the open ocean is very tedious so we had to get our equipment repaired or replaced.  Repair didn’t work so the owner’s wife flew to Lisbon,Portugal, picked up new equipment, and flew back here.  We will install it tomorrow and hope to set sail by late afternoon.  We are now about 2 weeks behind schedule so we have changed our destination to Barbados instead of Florida.  Diana and I will fly home from there and the couple who own the boat will sail on to Grenada.  Barbados is about 2100 miles from here, all downwind, so I think it should take us about 14 or15 days to get there.  I had hoped to race in the Huddleston Cup Regatta, but that will have to wait until next year.

by Larry Cailouet