Can anyone recommend a good windvane and/or self-steering solution
that could be used on a 17' open boat?

For a "do it yourself" solution look he

http://www.mindspring.com/~waltmur/Self-Steering/

There is also a forum about windvanes...
see:
http://www.cruisenews.net/cgi-bin/windvane/windvane.pl
In the forum posts you will find several links to different windvane
variants...

Paolo Zini

from Pisa, Italy