• Ahoy and Welcome to the New SSS Forums!!

    As you can see, we have migrated our old forums to new software. All your old posts, threads, attachments, and messages should be here. If you see anything out of place or have any questions, please scroll to the very bottom of the page and click "Contact Us" and leave a note with as much detail as possible.

    You should be able to login with your old credentials. If you have any issues, try resetting your password before clicking the Contact Us link.

    Cheers
    - Bryan

What worked, what didn't.

Paul,

nice write up. i'm curious to know how much you used your wind vane. Seeing as how you had a relatively nice/ modern/ hi performance pilot and a very nice vane set up, you had some options. let's hear it...

ronnie
 
Hey... it was fun seeing everyone last night.

Actually I didn't use the vane much, and never off the wind. So I can't comment much on the performance or compare to autopilot. On the return trip it was my intention to use the vane all the way, and I did for a time, while close reaching. It worked quite well and I have to say it is a magnificent piece of machinery, brilliant really. (Scanmar delivers!) But I went back to the autopilot after a while because I preferred following a great circle route instead of the wind direction. (I have this very cool, near-perfect GC track after reaching about 41N, well, minus the headwinds I hit for a couple days near the ridge of the high.)

Max used his vane much more than I did. And of course there are many others who can offer their (significant) experience with the vane. I hear many great things.

Have said that, my experience with having relative success with the autopilot (along with a spare ram that I had to put into service--good advice from Bob J. earlier), and also my success with my solar set up (I used almost no fuel at all for charging), I'm inclined to ditch the vane and sell it. For my little boat it adds a lot of weight aft, which is a big negative for me.

Paul/Culebra
 
I estimate the division of steering duty during the race as:
Raymarine X5 80%
Monitor 18%
Meat servo 2%

I used the Monitor during much of the heavy weather the first few days, and usually when I had the twins up, because I figured those were situations in which it would cope well. And I used it more on the way home, but at this point I don't recall how much more.

I was happy with the Monitor, but the course definitely wandered more than with the autopilot. Especially if the wind was under about 15 knots. Maybe I could have improved the courseholding if I'd fiddled with it more - I could have moved the attachment point on the tiller - but it was pretty good so I didn't mess with it.

Max
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top