I noticed that my ST60 display was not reading anything for speed and the direction needle was pegged at 12 oclock. Looking with binoculars, I can see that the wind vane transducer has rotated such that the anemometer and windvane shafts are horizontal, rather than vertical.
Without yet going aloft, I am wondering what could have caused this? Could the hold down screws for the the connector base have sheered off ? Could a large bird alighting on the windvane have caused this? Could the yard have caused this when they launched the boat?
is it possible that the connector could have loosened and allowed the windvane shaft to rotate? That seems not likely.
Has anyone else run into this?
All of those "reasons" sound plausible. Time to hook up your bosun's chair and take a look.
I have had problems with my anemometer not turning and the wind vane being stuck - spiders. had to go up the mast and clean out all of the old webs. might be as simple as that.
I am going to use my DJI Phantom drone to inspect the transducer and determine next step. I'll post the pictures.
Just to close out this thread.
I used my DJI Phantom drone to get a photo of the transducer to understand what caused the failure. This was helpful to do before I sent a helpful assistant up the mast.
(//)As you see in the photo, the arm locking ring had loosened up enough so that the shaft rotated, and all of the connector pins were bent. One of the connector pins broke off when I tried to straighten it. So I am going to either buy a new transducer for $325 or have Raymarine fix it, whatever makes most sense.
Great pic. Can you fly your drone over to West Michigan?
You might consider replacing your anchor light/fixture with an LED next time aloft?