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From: Peter Ogilvie (no email)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2006 - 15:29:49 EST
chuck <> wrote: autopilot - looked at wind vane and said no but is under constant review. I don't understand why anyone going offshore would get an A/P in lieu of a Windvane. A Vane first and then an autopilot. The vane is a fairly simple mechanical device that anyone can understand. Spares can be carried and jury rigs made from things commonly carried on your boat while at sea. Not much technical knowledge to keep the thing running. Many people have made circumnavigations and/or sailed for decades without performing any maintenance beyond replacing control lines or other simple, easily predictable replacements. As conditions become more challenging, vanes typically work better. More wind, more boat speed, the greater the steering input and steering force produced.
The A/P, on the other hand, requires all those little electrons to go to the right place at the right time and a constant supply in great quantity of the electrons or they don't work. Repair at sea is nearly impossible unless you can identify the exact part that has gone bad and have a very unique replacement part to install. If it is a circuit board or other unique electronic part that has gone bad, there is no fixing it, you have to replace the exact same part. Hopefully you brought along at least a complete whole other unit and pray the same part doesn't maki twice.
A/P's are power hogs and as the conditions worsen they require even more power and quite often perform more poorly or not at all. Worse problem is A/Ps tend to run out of ability as the conditions worsen. I'm sure that some autopilots can handle the boat in most any conditions but too many report the A/Ps can't handle steep seas and strong winds. Exactly and.
I hear cost factor as an excuse for going with an Autopilot. A new vane is going to cost $3,000 plus. It's a onetime expense however. A good autopilot capable of handling the day in, day out sailing requirements of long distance sailing is going to be well over a $1,000. Double that cost for all the spares you should carry, add in the wind generator and/or multiple solar panels to feed the thirsty bastard, and the inevitable cost of servicing the beast by expensive technicians and the Windvane seems cheap, by comparison.
The autopilot should be a nice to have backup for powering, close in shore work where you need spot on heading control and the ability to interface with a GPS while you sleep, and dead downwind if you sail with a spinnaker and like to surf. On all the other points of sail, a vane will silently and uncomplainingly sail the boat and leave you free to do anything you need or feel like doing. If a vane won't do it in winds over 5mph, you have something wrong with the installation, a boat that is dangerous and unsuitable for any offshore passage, or sea conditions where luck and consumate skill are what you need to survive.
From my experience, effective and completely reliable self steering is more important than the boat. I've made long (500+ miles) offshore passages without selfsteering. They were not fun but grueling survival contests. If your selfsteering is not absolutely reliable, you will be faced with similar challenges. It's not fun to sit at the helm 24/7, day in, day out. It cut's into your sleep, if nothing else.
On the boat we lived on for 3 years and cruised for two, the self steering steered the boat if the boat would sail. If the vane wouldn't steer the boat, we just dropped the sails, sat and waited for enough wind. The only time we drove, was getting into and out of harbors under power.
Aloha
Peter O.
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