BoatBanter.com - Auto steering gear

I have an old Swan 38 and just returned from a yearlong cruise from
the Northwest to Mexico, and returned home via Hawaii. When outfitting
for the trip cost was very much a concern and we decided to put a
Monitor wind vane on as our only autopilot. To have something for
motoring I bought the cheapest Simrad tiller pilot that Pyacht.com had.
I mounted it between the led counter weight on the Monitor and the aft
rail. There was a lot of concern from other boaters before we left that
the old IOR racer would not handle well with the narrow stern in
following seas.
After a year of living with it I am positive that any one who
questions the effectiveness of a well installed and maintained windvane
has never used one. The beauty of it was that the harder the wind blew,
the better it worked. We never had any real bad weather. The worst seas
were about 15-20 feet in 30kt off cape Mendocino, and it handled them
better then we could hand steering. When traversing from the Big Island
of Hawaii to Maui we saw 40kt and, as long as he sails were balanced,
the windvane worked great.
The tiller pilot worked well when motoring. In very light wind with a
good swell we would also use the tiller pilot when sailing. The power
use was minimal and never noticeably increased our need to charge. When
rounding the Pacific high the winds and seas became very light. But the
monitor with the vane worked well down wind with 7kts apparent and 4kt
boat speed. We even flew an asymmetrical for close to 48 hours
straight.
The down side was that the Monitor was slow to react to change of
course with either the vane or the tiller pilot. So when entering a
harbor or when going up the Columbia to Portland, we would hand steer.
On other boats I have piloted with hydraulic pilots we would use them
closer in then the wind vane.
The only other big drawback which you don't hear much about it the
potential damage they can do to an inflatable dingy. In Mexico they
were sometimes referred to as dingy slicers. We found that having a
longer painter solved the potential hazard.
The only people I saw having problems with them were boats that
also had large hydraulic autopilots. It seemed that since they had a
good fall back, they never went through the learning process to figure
out how to make the windvanes work. It took me a whole day. The process
was like learning to trim a new type of sail. If I were limited to
sailing on the Columbia or in Puget sound, I would be happy with a
wheel pilot. But for any distance, the Monitor was a great choice.
John
SV Pangea