I've posted this warning before

The Autohelm St4000 wheel autopilot contains a flaw that in my opinion
is serious and dangerous.

TO engage the autohelm, you flip a lever that rotates a cam that presses
against a belt, locking the autohelm ring to the wheel.

THe connection between the cam and lever is maintained by two little
pins...to me they look like shear pins. I had those pins break once. THe
autohelm was engaged, I flipped the little lever to disengage because we
were entering tight quarters and some did something unexpected. The
lever lifted, but the autohelm remained engaged, locking the wheel so
that I could not turn it.

I applied all of my strength and *just managed to turn the wheel back
out to sea. Once I reached a point where I was not near anyone else, I
removed the motor so that I could steer again. I don't even want to
think about the consequences has this problem snuck up on me in a
really tight situation. I could not have avoided a collision if a
collision was imminent. No way to turn the wheel.

If you have an ST-4000, make damn sure you disengage early. You could be
in for a nasty surprise if you wait!

Jere Lull wrote:
wrote:

The article in the most current issue of "Soundings" about the recent
L.I. Sound collision-caused death (from a heart attack triggered by
the crash) of an otherwise *very* experienced/skillful and also
asssertedly safety-oriented captain/sailor when the J-105 in which he
was sleeping, crewed by his son and a friend, was motoring late at
night in the fog toward Block Island and was hit and sunk by a large
commercial cruiser reports that the J-105's two crew saw the
approaching motor boat (said to be moving at +/- 6 kts) but could not
disengage their autopilot in time to take evasive action.
How many of us who occasionally (or, for that matter, lots of the
time) use these sorts of instruments actually insure that,
f'rinstance, to disengage an autopilot, etc., Etc. (however
"simple"/easy [and "obvious"?] one [who is experienced] might think
that and related operations ought be and usually are)?


We have a tiller pilot: my crew know to pick it up off the pin and move
the tiller, punching "standby" if they have time. It's right there in
plain view, so it *seems* obvious to me, but now that I think about it,
my crew thought it'd break something at first.

When we've chartered, one of the first things I "noticed" was that you
have to hit "standby" before the wheel can move, but I am a helm-hog and
like to get the most out of the boat, so find out about such things
pretty early as I follow wind-shifts.

I can imagine that in the rush to get "gone", the skipper didn't take
the time to info every crew member on such a simple thing. Seems SO
obvious to anyone that's used an autopilot, but the first time, it ain't
necessarily so.

Then again, we once were on a beautiful close reach on a charter boat,
the helm lock doing most of the steering, when I handed the helm over to
my engineer, who I was grooming to skipper his own charter. Things went
just ducky until he tried to turn the wheel for a tack. He knew to undo
the thumbscrew, but the soda can that had fallen between the wheel's
spokes and seat caused a bit of consternation. It's just not possible to
tell everything that could happen to crew.

From what I see above, it sounds like the captain was a bit lax, but
the crew may well have said they knew how to operate the autohelm.