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West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
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Hi chris,
We installed a Raytheon Autohelm TillerPilot ST1000+ a few months ago and
only used it a few times before the weather got cold. We've just
experimented a bit, not really done a whole lot with it.
We got it for future single-handing, but so far all our "trials" have been
with two of us on board. So far we know it can do the following: It will
hold a course while I raise or lower the sails or just have to run into the
cabin for something. It will hold a course with just the outboard, in no
wind.
In moderate winds over for longer periods of time than just a few minutes,
it seems to be reliable from a very broad reach (170 degrees or so?)to about
50 degrees off the wind. But alot of that depends on how gusty and shifty
the winds are I think. We haven't tried it yet in wind over about 15 knots.
The autopilot does all kinds of fancy things. It will auto-tack through an
angle of about 100 degrees, by just hitting one button. It will take
waypoints and courses from our GPS or laptop (if I can remember how to get
the GPS to do all that stuff)
It's simple to set up and remove, takes about 60 seconds. It disconnects in
about 1 or 2 seconds, if you want to get it out of the way in an emergency
requiring "hands-on" steering. When it's stowed, there's hardly any
reminder that it was there, just the little gadget at the rear of the
cockpit and the bracket under the tiller. They don't seem to be in the way
at all.
I'm not too worried about power consumption - the ST1000+ is rated for a
boat about 3 times the displacement of the P19 and at some point in the
past, I figured our 95 amphour battery would drive the boat in moderate
winds for about 16 hours -- which is far longer than we expect to use it in
the near future.
You can add a windvane option to the Autohelm, so you can steer to the
apparent wind instead of a compass course, but I hear from local folks that
it doesn't work well on SF Bay because the winds are very gusty. It's about
$150 extra, so I didn't get the windvane add-on. If we every do a lot of
coastal sailing, I may give it a try.
That's all I can say right now. After we've had it for one season, I'll
have a better informed opinion.
Fair winds,
Judy B
1985 WWP-19 #266 Redwing
SF Bay CA
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