In Paul Cassel writes:

NE Sailboat wrote:
Yo .. Captain Roger .. on my Bristol 32, my self steering gear is a Bungy
Cord.

The link .. http://www.jsward.com/steering/index.shtml

This goes back to 1974. The author, apparently wrote a book that shows how
to set this up..

And before the Windvane, this method was used by some for very long
passages.

For the life of me, the article just doesn't make sense to me. I read it
five times.

Dumb I guess.

PS .. the B32 , will be nearby this coming season ,,, maybe.. depends of
crew.


I tried this time after time on my Westsail 32 with no good results
despite reading in several places that it should work. I am very
skeptical that 'many long passages' were made this way aside from short
times off the tiller. The implication that you can leave the helm for
days while this arrangement works wasn't proved by my experiments.

Different boat behave differently in different directions of wind and sea
conditions. I have a 40" sloop, keel base some 7", so it is no long
keeler, but on a beat it steers nicely with a piece of rope from the
tiller to the windward rail. On the run I would not even dream of
letting it be more than about 10 seconds unattended with a passive self
steering, but my windvane is capable of steering for days. The longest
time I have sailed with the "string-steering" (hard on wind) is 22
hours, without anybody touching the helm. Then we had to tack, because
there was an Island in front of us.

The idea of having the the steering force from a sheet, is based on the
possibility that the pressure of the sheet can be balanced with the
pressure of the tiller. If the boat bears down there will be more
pressure and when the baot luffs up there will be less pressure and the
sail, usually the jib, either pulls the helm to windward or lets it down
to leeward. For this to work there must be certain amount of weather
helm, and the pressure of the wind on the jib must equal the need to
keep the tiller in proper position. It should be clear without saying,
that it is not easy to achieve this balance and the friction of the
ropes must be such, that it on other hand dampens some of the action,
but on the other hand is sensitive enough to react properly, not too
much and not too little.

Some boats will keep their course on certain conditions for hours, if
you just tie the tiller (or wheel) down, but most modern boats are a bit
too lively to do it on other courses than hard on wind.

- Lauri Tarkkonen