La Mischief is now pretty ready to cross 2000nm of empty ocean (I hope). To get her there we’ve done the following.
- New Iridium Go for communications including tracking and weather down loading. We have an older hand held sat phone but I like backup.
- New 156m2 parasailor with reinforced payedes and 100m of new lines. Going downwind requires some careful thinking and the parasail will be the most gentle on La Mischief’s catamaran rig believe it or not.
- Second raymarine autopilot. We have already suffered 2 failures and hand steering 10 days at sea would drive me and the crew mad. The ARC reported that 5% of autopilots failed and there’s other rallies that have reported much higher failure rates. I reckon 70% of boats in this rally have backup automatic steering systems installed (many monohull have wind vane steering).
- A new D400 wind generator. Power always seems to be an issue on La Mischief and with the instruments going 24×7 , and the radar and nav lights going 12×7 it’s going to be chewing up a lot of amp hours.Wind gens aren’t the greatest when sailing downwind but every little bit helps and the steady winds of the Carribean should give us a boost.
- New Danbouy, new charts, new McMurdo AIS MOB devices and new trilight at top of mast.
I’m sure there are other bits and pieces but these are the major items.
A Little Bit of Mischief 
Hi Steve & Dee, looks like you’re in good shape to cross. Curious -what size Parasailor did you get? We have the 105m2 and sometimes wish we had even larger. We love our D 400 for the night power especially. We did find 50 knots was too much so now at 40 knots we stop the blades. We found the mounting cost more than the actual unit, but well worth it to be mounted well (on our Antares we put it on a reinforced pole off our davit arch) Also, on all those autopilot failures do you know wh4at is breaking? Motors? We should be in the Canaries by mid October. Will you still be there? Great posts – we’re enjoying them all. Ellen & Rand
Thanks for the advice on d400. We have 156m2 parasailor – middle size of the choices thomas gave us. First time our autopilot failed was brushes. Second time – no idea. Came back to life after 17 hours – and has worked okay since.