Autopilot!!!!

We having been installing the new auto pilot over the past week. I know the electronics parts, and did all that on my own. I don't have any experience with hydraulics and needed advice. I found the card of Anthony Zabaldo at West Marine. He has the best prices and didn't waste anytime getting me set up. He was a big help. If you are in the San Diego area and need any type of boat work, call him. 

I did some short tests on the auto pilot yesterday, and all is well. We will be going offshore in a couple days where we will have miles of open water and I will feel more comfortable giving the helm over to a computer. 

UPDATE: DEC. 19TH 2013

It seems that Anthony may not have been the best person to call for hydraulics, after all. 

The way he plumbed the hydraulics tubes was incorrect and caused the lockout valve, on the steering pump, to malfunction. 

We found this out the had way. Dominga and I were planning to sail to Mexico, the next day, and thought we should test out the newly installed auto-pilot. We sailed into the middle of S.D. Bay to do this. Well, that day the U.S. War department was doing war-games in the bay also, which made this all the more fun. 

As we tested the auto-pilot in light winds the navy go-fast boats were zipping around us. We tried to tack to starboard and the auto-pilot lost all control. Now the steering is supper spongy and we're having issue steering it at all. I though, for sure,  we were going to get shot or something as we looked like drunken sailers going in circles, at one point cutting off a Navy Zodiac. 

We finally limped back to the anchorage to lick our wounds and try to figure out what when wrong. It took me a day to just figure out the issue was the lockout valve and another 2 days to find one. This steering pump was dis-continued 20 years ago and no one makes parts. Southbay diesel and hydraulics was the only place that I could find that had one. The manager said it's been on his shelf for 13 years and he was extremely nice and showed me how this worked and gave this $130+ part, for free!

I installed this new part and it still didn't work. At this point I didn't know that Anthony's plumbing of the hydraulics was the issue. So, I called him to see if he had any ideas. He recommended I call Daily/Seatech. This was the best advice he gave me. It was a 15 mile bike ride there (and then back), but they showed me how to properly plump the hydraulics and attach the lockout valve. And they told me the way we had it put together is the reason it malfunctioned. 

Dominga and I put the system back together and took it out for a test run the next day. It works great! Steers better than it even has and the autopilot works great. 

Because this has costed us a lot of extra time and money, we considered staying in San Diego and making some money to build up the kitty. Apparently that's not easy in this area. As one local put it, this town is so used to cruisers coming through looking for work and then just leaving that no one really wants to even talk to you. So, maybe it's better to just go to Mexico with extremely little money than to stay in San Diego with extremely little money.