Lauri Tarkkonen wrote:
In .com " writes:
....
Because it is different for different boats, it is perhaps necessary to
bring some other angles into this.

I agree with you and I want to make it clear that the "benefits" and
"costs" I listed were in relation to my current boat which is a
moderatly quick and light multihull. I think that the percentage of
light fast boats in the "serious" cruising fleet here in the Pacific is
growing quickly but as you rightly point out a significant majority of
the boats out here are well suited to wind-vane steering. Long range
cruisers in small boats (say less than 65 feet) that can use wind vane
steering probably ought to use it and will probably love it.

....
II. Costs:
1) very expensive compared to electronic self steering unless home
built.

Expensive compared to cheap electronics, but one should not compare the
price of a state of the art windvane to the cheapest electronic pilots.

Here in the States you can get a pretty nice gyro assised AP unit for
about half the price of quality vane set-up. My B&G system cost me
about the same as a vane but has a lot more functionality. YMMV.


2) Adds a lot of weight to the end of the boat reducing available
payload, increasing ptiching moment and increasing drag. Speed and
seakeeping costs are larger on total and percantage basis as boats get
lighter and faster.

Windpilot Pacific (boats from 30 to 65 feet) weights 44 lbs (20 kg), I
would not call this a lot. I am positive that in a 40 foor boat you can
not see or feel the difference in pitching.

Here I disagree. I've delivered boats in "cruise" mode and then sailed
them in "race" mode and the differences are astounding. Race mode
isn't just faster, it more comfortable if slowed to the same speed as
cruise mode, too. I grant you that this may be a hard sell here in
rbc, but weight in the ends of boats is very bad. If you put 20 kg on
the stearn of most 40 ft boats the stearn will sink a cm or two. This
doens't seem signifcant. Typically the owner will just move a bit of
junk foreward to bring the boat on to her lines. The pitching moment
has been increased by the 20 kg times the square of it's distance from
the center of pitching and has also been increased by moving the other
stuff to re-trim the boat. At this point the amout of time it takes
for the boat to respond to a wave has been increased noticably. At
least noticably to those of us who sail upwind in winds of force 6 and
greater and have been spoiled by boats that do this well...

....

6) Exposed to elements, part failures, eg oars and vanes, common.

Is not true for the good ones. I would dare to make a bet that a proper
windvane, say Windpilot, will outlast almost any electronic pilot.

I've watched 5 "classes" come through the Pacific milk run and vane
failure is pretty common, but you don't need to find an EE to fix it...



Fast boats will put more strain on the gear and should expect greater
failure rates.

The same applies to electronic gear.

Not really. A well designed rudder will tend to keep steering loads
light at the quadrant or tiller even at high speeds which is all the AP
will feel.

....

12) Look industrial.

You may keep your opinion on the looks.

Sorry, I listed looks in both categories. The OP says he like them so
they would be a benefit for him.
....

-- Tom.

In .com " writes:

Lauri Tarkkonen wrote:
In .com " writes:
...
Because it is different for different boats, it is perhaps necessary to
bring some other angles into this.

I agree with you and I want to make it clear that the "benefits" and
"costs" I listed were in relation to my current boat which is a
moderatly quick and light multihull. I think that the percentage of
light fast boats in the "serious" cruising fleet here in the Pacific is
growing quickly but as you rightly point out a significant majority of
the boats out here are well suited to wind-vane steering. Long range
cruisers in small boats (say less than 65 feet) that can use wind vane
steering probably ought to use it and will probably love it.

...
II. Costs:
1) very expensive compared to electronic self steering unless home
built.

Expensive compared to cheap electronics, but one should not compare the
price of a state of the art windvane to the cheapest electronic pilots.

Here in the States you can get a pretty nice gyro assised AP unit for
about half the price of quality vane set-up. My B&G system cost me
about the same as a vane but has a lot more functionality. YMMV.

Looks like the price difference is not as much as you wanted to point
out. By the way, I have had so many failures with the B&G system, that I
am happy that it does not steer my boat.

2) Adds a lot of weight to the end of the boat reducing available
payload, increasing ptiching moment and increasing drag. Speed and
seakeeping costs are larger on total and percantage basis as boats get
lighter and faster.

Windpilot Pacific (boats from 30 to 65 feet) weights 44 lbs (20 kg), I
would not call this a lot. I am positive that in a 40 foor boat you can
not see or feel the difference in pitching.

Here I disagree. I've delivered boats in "cruise" mode and then sailed
them in "race" mode and the differences are astounding. Race mode
isn't just faster, it more comfortable if slowed to the same speed as
cruise mode, too. I grant you that this may be a hard sell here in
rbc, but weight in the ends of boats is very bad. If you put 20 kg on
the stearn of most 40 ft boats the stearn will sink a cm or two. This
doens't seem signifcant. Typically the owner will just move a bit of
junk foreward to bring the boat on to her lines. The pitching moment
has been increased by the 20 kg times the square of it's distance from
the center of pitching and has also been increased by moving the other
stuff to re-trim the boat. At this point the amout of time it takes
for the boat to respond to a wave has been increased noticably. At
least noticably to those of us who sail upwind in winds of force 6 and
greater and have been spoiled by boats that do this well...

I doubt that there are any cruisers, who will move anything because of a
new 44 lbs weight in their stern.
...

6) Exposed to elements, part failures, eg oars and vanes, common.

Is not true for the good ones. I would dare to make a bet that a proper
windvane, say Windpilot, will outlast almost any electronic pilot.

I've watched 5 "classes" come through the Pacific milk run and vane
failure is pretty common, but you don't need to find an EE to fix it...



Fast boats will put more strain on the gear and should expect greater
failure rates.

The same applies to electronic gear.

Not really. A well designed rudder will tend to keep steering loads
light at the quadrant or tiller even at high speeds which is all the AP
will feel.

I would not recommend windvanes with their own steering rudders, as the
boats own rudder is superior to that and the idea of having the rudder
of the windpilot as an emergency back up, is only sales propaganda. In
most cases where you loose your rudder you will loose the windvane
rudder as well.

...

12) Look industrial.

You may keep your opinion on the looks.

Sorry, I listed looks in both categories. The OP says he like them so
they would be a benefit for him.

No reason to apologice, I think you may have any opinion about the looks
and you can change them at your whim.

- Lauri Tarkkonen

...

-- Tom.

Lauri Tarkkonen wrote:
....
I doubt that there are any cruisers, who will move anything because of a
new 44 lbs weight in their stern.

I would and I consider myself a cruiser.

-- Tom.

In .com " writes:

Lauri Tarkkonen wrote:
...
I doubt that there are any cruisers, who will move anything because of a
new 44 lbs weight in their stern.

I would and I consider myself a cruiser.

-- Tom.

And how many besides you? I know that in racing half a boatlenght at the
rounding mark will give you and advantage and perhaps win you a race,
but when you are sailing alone, you can not measure or regognize the
difference. Of course you can believe it and belief moves mountains as
they say.

- Lauri Tarkkonen

I doubt that there are any cruisers, who will move anything because of a
new 44 lbs weight in their stern.

I would and I consider myself a cruiser.

And how many besides you? ...

Well, I know quite a few cruisers and delivery skippers who always make
the effort to tune and trim a boat before going on a voyage. I also
know folks who are happy that the sea will "autostow" their gear for
them and don't give any thought to trim at all. How many cruisers are
there in the world in the first category? I don't know. Filtering
through just cruising people I know I'd say maybe 25% of the total and
near 100% of the pro and semi-pro sailors. Will cruisers notice the
difference between a well trimmed boat a poorly trimed one? Some will.
For instance, my girl friend and I recently set sail from New Zealand
bound for Honolulu. Two fully crewed boats run by owners, more in the
"autostow" camp than the careful stow camp, set out on the same route
over a day ahead of us. We overtook both boats just over 72 hours out
and we all pretty quickly ran into gale force head winds caused by a
stalled complex low trapped on a very intense high. I slowed my boat
down to 4-6 knots to make the ride tolerable and continued beating
along the track freeing myself from the crush zone in just over a week.
The other two boats were unable to make good any ground to windward,
both took damage, and when the winds finally relented both were forced
to divert to make repairs an let off crew. One of the two finally made
it to Honolulu nearly two months after we arrived the other never got
here. I am familiar with both boats and I am sure that the reason that
they were stopped by those conditions was because they had paid very
little attention to setting their boats up for efficient sailing. I
suspect that damage that they took was increased because their poor
trim made their boats work harder against the sea than they needed to.
I could list other stories, like my friends who took off from Tonga
headed for Samoa but had to give up and go to Fiji after two weeks
because the couldn't go upwind into the trades and my friends that left
Honolulu bound for the mainland only to return because they couldn't
make way into the trades... In the later case, just a bit of rig
tuning and moving an anchor and it's rode off the bow got them back out
there and off to where they wanted to go.

Now, I don't want to make a judgement on the "correctness" of the two
schools, and I'm not even sure that there are two distinct schools but
suspect a normal curve. I cruise to have fun. My experience is that
the "autostow" folks tend to have a lot of fun and have great stories
to tell at the bar, too. But I do think that it there are times when a
cruiser's life is noticablely better when sailing on a well trimmed
boat.

-- Tom.

In .com " writes:

I doubt that there are any cruisers, who will move anything because of a
new 44 lbs weight in their stern.

I would and I consider myself a cruiser.

And how many besides you? ...

Well, I know quite a few cruisers and delivery skippers who always make
the effort to tune and trim a boat before going on a voyage. I also
know folks who are happy that the sea will "autostow" their gear for
them and don't give any thought to trim at all. How many cruisers are
there in the world in the first category? I don't know. Filtering
through just cruising people I know I'd say maybe 25% of the total and
near 100% of the pro and semi-pro sailors. Will cruisers notice the
difference between a well trimmed boat a poorly trimed one? Some will.
For instance, my girl friend and I recently set sail from New Zealand
bound for Honolulu. Two fully crewed boats run by owners, more in the
"autostow" camp than the careful stow camp, set out on the same route
over a day ahead of us. We overtook both boats just over 72 hours out
and we all pretty quickly ran into gale force head winds caused by a
stalled complex low trapped on a very intense high. I slowed my boat
down to 4-6 knots to make the ride tolerable and continued beating
along the track freeing myself from the crush zone in just over a week.
The other two boats were unable to make good any ground to windward,
both took damage, and when the winds finally relented both were forced
to divert to make repairs an let off crew. One of the two finally made
it to Honolulu nearly two months after we arrived the other never got
here. I am familiar with both boats and I am sure that the reason that
they were stopped by those conditions was because they had paid very
little attention to setting their boats up for efficient sailing. I
suspect that damage that they took was increased because their poor
trim made their boats work harder against the sea than they needed to.
I could list other stories, like my friends who took off from Tonga
headed for Samoa but had to give up and go to Fiji after two weeks
because the couldn't go upwind into the trades and my friends that left
Honolulu bound for the mainland only to return because they couldn't
make way into the trades... In the later case, just a bit of rig
tuning and moving an anchor and it's rode off the bow got them back out
there and off to where they wanted to go.

Now, I don't want to make a judgement on the "correctness" of the two
schools, and I'm not even sure that there are two distinct schools but
suspect a normal curve. I cruise to have fun. My experience is that
the "autostow" folks tend to have a lot of fun and have great stories
to tell at the bar, too. But I do think that it there are times when a
cruiser's life is noticablely better when sailing on a well trimmed
boat.

If you try to tell me that the difference between death and life is the
44 pounds of a windvane installed in tha rear, I have to tell you that I
rather take the boat with the proper windvane than the one without.

If the less than 50 pound weight is bothering you soo much you have to
move your gear everytime you spend some water or pi in the septic tank.

- Lauri Tarkkonen

Lauri Tarkkonen wrote:
If you try to tell me that the difference between death and life is the
44 pounds of a windvane installed in tha rear, I have to tell you that I
rather take the boat with the proper windvane than the one without.

I am sorry you got that impression from my post. I was not trying to
suggest any such thing.

Once more, as I've said each time, I think windavnes are great and they
work very well on most cruising boats.

-- Tom.