You know all that emergency kit you’ve got hidden away around the boat? The softwood plugs for skin fittings, the underwater epoxy, twin spinnaker poles that you never use but might make a jury rig one day…

I’ve got a book called Singlehanded Sailing: Thoughts, Tips, Techniques & Tactics by an American called Andrew Evans. It’s down at the bottom of the list in my Kindle – well it was, because I always ignored it when browsing through old Nevil Shute titles for some comfort reading. It’s not even a proper ebook. It’s a pdf file, so you really need to read it on the iPad.

But it had its moment of glory on the crossing of the Celtic Sea from Falmouth to Crosshaven. This is 184 miles, so a couple of days. Not what you’d call a “voyage”, but on the other hand, you wouldn’t want to be stuck at the tiller all that way.

Which is why I was so glad of the Raymarine autopilot since the Aries was away in Amsterdam being fixed after hitting an iceberg off the Grand Banks – at least that’s the way I tell it. Actually, since the autopilot had steered us something like 1,800 miles (and then some), I had become somewhat blasé about its efficient buzzing to and fro at the back of the cockpit.

Now, just north of the Scillies, it started taking us round in circles.

Nothing I could do would placate it. I cleaned its real gold terminals. I unscrewed its plug and looked at the wiring buried under an enormous blob of silicone. I went and investigated for a chunk of metal that had become dislodged and fallen next to the fluxgate compass…

In the end, I hand-steered us through the passage between the Seven Stones and the Eastern Isles. Somebody had to.

But that still left 130 miles to go. To begin with, it looked like 24 hours at the helm for me – but surely the boat would steer herself. I have written elsewhere about abandoning my “singlehanded self-rescue system”. This involved a line running round the deck that I could pull if I fell over and was being dragged along at six knots on the end of my harness tether. This line was supposed to disconnect the self-steering… except that with the wind forward of the beam, Samsara will just carry on at six knots until she runs up a beach somewhere in Brazil.

However, with the wind anywhere else – like what we had now – she’s all over the place.

That was when I reached for Mr Evans’ Thoughts, Tips, Techniques & Tactics. Somewhere in there, I remembered seeing a chapter about sheet-to tiller self-steering. I had always meant to try it, but ended up sitting in the sun instead. There were various different systems described: The Tiller Line System, the Long Line System, the Poled-Out Jib System…

I opted for The Storm Jib System. It seemed the simplest. And indeed it was: It took no more than five minutes to set up, and it worked brilliantly. I didn’t take it down until we were within ten miles of the Irish coast and the wind headed us. I couldn’t be bothered to keep dismantling it for every tack.

Meanwhile Owen, the engineer with the messiest workshop I’ve ever seen (it’s a shipping container) is getting me a new autopilot plug on Monday and the Aries is being sent back from Amsterdam because Dutch customs says I should pay duty because it is a “temporal export” (sounds like the procedure for getting contraband through the Pearly Gates).

In fact, DHL insist I don’t, but it’s now going back to the Isle of Man before coming on here and then, as a new consignment, back to Amsterdam (without leaving the EU – clever, huh? Bloody Brexit!)

*If you’re an avid reader of this blog, you may have noticed this entry replaces one called “Self-steering and Hyena Offal” in which I went on something of a rant about customs and couriers and “The Second Most Stupid Decision Ever Made By Any Country, Ever).

You’ll be pleased to hear I have calmed down, now – and apologised to Angela in the Isle of Man DHL depot.

I told her I suffered from a mental condition and had been a bit mad on Thursday. Well, it’s true: Read Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier. One reviewer said it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. https://amzn.eu/d/geiMNUG

The description from the book

It works too…

The “Storm Jib System” from “Singlehanded Sailling: Thoughts, Tips, Techniques & Tactics” by David Evans

By the way, did you notice the new Good Health page? Have a look: https://oldmansailing.com/good-health ?

Have a look.