Highland games and trouble with George

The last 48 hours have certainly been eventful!
i was asleep off watch when I heard a plaintive call of "Trev!" in my
dreams. I dashed up on deck to find Richard grappling with the radar pole,
like a drunken Scotsman trying to toss the caber. We had been tromping
along in a fresh breeze when the base of the pole - holing our radar, GPS
and other systems had detached itself from the boat and was threatening to
topple into the pond. We managed to wrestle it back in place, always aware
of the threat of damage to the many wires that emerge from its base, to find
the seating had completely stripped its thread. We jury-rigged a nice set
of shrouds from Dyneema, along with some whipping up the pole itself, so it
is now trussed up like a best end of Silverside and relocated into position.
During all this furore, our autopilot, George, decided he wasn't getting
enough attention, so decided to switch off during the process. It was only
a little while later that we realised that George having a serious sulk and
wouldn't hold course, but instead cavorted all over the ocean. By this
time, night had fallen and there was little option but to hand steer through
the night. And what a night! A cold front was forecast, but nothing too
bad. But one thing we've learnt on this trip is to expect the worst and
multiply it by a third, and we were very glad we did. With winds
consistently of 32 knots and very heavy, confused seas, we were please to
have already set the No 4 genoa and three reefs in the main. We took turnds
at the helm and flew along at over 7 knots throughout the night, emerging
into the daylight absolutely shattered, but undamaged.
The weather brightened and we scratched our heads about George. The idea of
another 1800 miles of hand steering was not a plasant one. Clearly, the
fault had occurred during the radar pole-tossing event, so our first
thoughts were damage to the electrics feeding data to the system, from the
antennae on the pole. Further deliberations and reading of manuals, a light
bulb went on in Richard's head and he checked some of the autohelm
settings - Tarrrah! - the ruddder gain had mysteriously changed to its
highest setting, making George swing the rudder violently at every course
correction. We must have lent on the autohelm buttons during the pole
episode and, by fate, pressed an exact combination that made the change. We
were right about linking the pole episode to Georges demise, the two were
not directly linked. It goes to show - correlation is not necessarily
causation!
Trev