I'm coming around to Connie's way of thinking on the Autohelm. My concern was the amount of juice it would consume from an already small, taxed battery system on these boats. But put an alternator on a 4 HP or 5 HP outboard and that concern goes away. The motor generates more than enough juice to power the Autohelm. And use sheet-to-tiller when sailing if you don't want to chance running out of battery power. Covers it all. BTW....my windvane setup eliminates the cockpit lines. A servo mounted on the back of the rudder controls it directly as a trim tab does. All it needs is one change in the vane setup and it's a really good, working system. BTW...both S-T-T and windvanes teach you a lot about the affects of apparent wind. Howard On 3/27/06 12:37 PM, "chbenneck@juno.com" <chbenneck@juno.com> wrote:
Hi Rick,
On our old Tripp-Lentsch I tried both approaches.
I built a horizontal axis wind vane (and you'd be surprised at how much weight you need to keep the vane upright), and when set up, adjusted, and tweaked, it worked beautifully.
I have set it on course leaving Westerly, RI, and didn't touch it again till I had reached Block Island - about 21 NM.
The negative aspect of the wind vane was that the cockpit was so full of crisscrossing lines that the Admirable objected. She couldn't stretch out on the cockpit seats and snooze without maybe hitting control lines and turning the ship off course.
So, I then tried sheet to tiller steering.
Fewer lines, and it worked just as well, though you didn't impress others with the "Wow" factor of having a wind vane lazily swinging back and forth on the stern.
Using Letcher's book, I played with close reaches, beam reaches; and also using the main sheet for control input, while hard on the wind.
All worked well.
The problem arises, however, when you have a flat calm and have to motor home. Then, without wind to power your sheet to tiller system, it doesn't work.
That's when I bought an Autohelm and installed it. The Autohelm works when the wind blows, and when there is no wind, ........ and there is a lot less clutter of lines in the cockpit.
My two cents worth.
Connie
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