The solution to this is either an autopilot or a wind vane. Autopilots require a lot of electrical power when they are in continuous operation - especially when I'm sailing down wind. I hope to do a lot of down wind sailing. It is so much more pleasant than beating into the wind and the waves.
A wind vane is a logical choice for a sailboat. It uses wind power and water power to do the steering. It consists of a vane that senses wind direction and some kind of linkage to a rudder to make corrections so the boat stays at the same angle to the wind. Since sailboats are wind powered, this makes a lot of sense. Yes, when the wind shifts, so does the boat's course. That's when I get up out of my bunk, reset the vane and retrim the sails. With an autopilot, the course would stay the same but I still would have to do the sail trimming. All told, I would say the wind vane is the hands down winner in the autopilot/wind vane competition on a sailboat.
One of the really great things about a wind vane is that it is a silent crew member. It doesn't complain. It doesn't eat. I doesn't get tired of steering the boat. What more could I ask for? Well ... we won't go into that here.
Way back in the dark ages - about 1960 or so, an Englishman by the name of Blondie Hasler came up with an arrangement called a pendulum-servo wind vane. It consists of a vane that sticks up into the air and can be turned to the desired angle between the boat and the wind. If the boat goes a bit off course, the vane is blown over to one side. The vane is linked to a rudder-like device (an oar) in the water that, in addition to being able to turn, it swings from side to side like a pendulum. When the oar turns, the pressure of the water flowing past it causes the oar to swing to one side. There are lines (ropes) attached to the oar that, in turn, are attached to the tiller or steering wheel in a way that causes the boat to return to the original angle relative to the wind.
I'm sure that is confusing. Maybe it will be more clear as this discourse progresses.
When I sailed my old boat, Chatelaine, out into the Pacific in 1975/76, I had an early model of the wind vane now known as the Monitor. At the time, it was considerably cheaper than the Aries, the only other pendulum-servo wind vane on the market. When I started thinking about a wind vane for Laelia, I was delighted to find that the Monitor had become easily the most popular pendulum-servo wind vane on the market. I visited the manufacturing facility at Scanmar International in Richmond, CA, and found that my beloved Monitor has been much improved over the years. It is built of better quality, more robust materials than my old vane. Additionally, the Monitor has been installed on a number of boats identical to mine so ScanMar had detailed drawings of the installation.
I finally scraped together the money to buy the Monitor about a month ago. It looked to be a pretty simple proposition to mount it on the transom (the rear-most part of the boat). There were four mounting brackets and four stainless steel tubes that positioned the wind vane. I went to work installing the upper brackets and did a trial fitting to see how it would all work.
I talked to the folks at Scanmar and after some discussion, they agreed to make a custom mount that would put the wind vane an additional six inches away from the boat. This meant adding two more stainless steel tubes for extra bracing. They did this at no additional cost to me. I call that great service!
That left me with the task of attaching the lines from the servo oar to the steering wheel and running a line used to turn the vane to point the right direction. All it took was another $350 to buy additional blocks (pulleys) to route them properly and keep the friction in the lines to a minimum.
Sunday, July 29th was the day of the first sailing trial. My neighbors, Eric and Diane, were eager to go along and see how an experienced sailor handled a boat. (They were talking about me!) They live on a boat just a few feet away from mine so they had been spectators to the whole ordeal of mounting the vane. They would come to look at it, shake their head and say that it was hard to believe that it would work.
The day looked perfect from my berth at Pete's Harbor. Lots of sun, enough wind to ensure a good sail and tides that would work in my favor for the sail. When I say "would work in my favor" I mean that we set out a low tide. If I run aground at low tide, the rising tide will eventually float the boat again. If I run aground at high tide, I could be there for 12 hours and 45 minutes until the next high tide. If the next high tide wasn't as high as the previous one, it would be another 12 hours and 45 minutes before the next. This could go on for quite a long time until either I get a higher high tide or I pay someone to come drag me off the mud.
We left the slip with minimal fuss - quite a feat (if I do say so myself) given that this is undoubtedly the worst berth in the marina for getting in and out. We motored down Redwood Creek toward South San Francisco Bay and discovered that the wind was going to be from dead ahead as we went up the channel to the bay. Not to worry. The engine was running fine and we plugged along until we finally cleared the narrow channel leading to Redwood Creek.
Now, readers of this blog may recall my experience of moving the boat down here from Sausalito (see "A wild ride"). It doesn't take much wind to kick up a nasty short, steep chop in the shallow waters in the south bay. On this day, with only about 10 knots of wind, it was definitely lumpy sailing.
Nonetheless, I unrolled an appropriate amount of jib for the conditions and turned the helm over to Eric while I started messing around with the wind vane. Remember what I said about lumpy conditions? In a matter of about 10 minutes, I was hanging over the rail feeding my last ten meals to the fish. I would have one of those gut wrenching episode, do some work with the wind vane and return to feeding the fish.
The result? When Laelia was going to windward, the wind vane did an excellent job of steering. But then again, Laelia will sail herself for short periods when going to windward so that wasn't much of a test.
By the time we had tried this out, I had my third trip to the rail and I was ready to call it quits for the day. We turned downwind to return to Pete's Harbor. The vane didn't do quite so good a job downwind. Laelia was out of trim (my fault) and she tends to wallow in a following sea to begin with. I had to keep on the helm and add corrections to keep her on course. I thing that this was mostly because of the arrangement of the steering lines. There was too much slack in them and I had no good way of adjusting them. I was able to both tack and gybe with the wind vane doing most of the steering and the mizzen boom did not hit the wind vane.
Sad to say, I was paying too much attention to the wind vane and not enough to navigating. At some point, Diane pointed to a channel marker some way off to starboard and asked if that was the one we were suppose do be sailing to. I pulled out the GPS unit and saw that she was correct. It was actually the second marker - we had missed the entrance to the channel Redwood Creek channel and were sailing merrily along toward the main channel toward the Dumbarton Bridge. In my debilitated condition, I made a bad decision. I decided to cut across from the channel we were in to the one we wanted to be in. It was just past low tide so it is no surprise that in short order we were stuck in the mud.
I figured that the rising tide and the action of the waves lifting the boat would eventually get us off the bottom. I was right, but it took a little over two hours. In the meantime, we were getting beaten up by the choppy waves. We were turned beam on (sideways) to the waves. They would break against the side of the boat and the spray would douse us all. Fortunately, I had put on my foul weather pants earlier so I wasn't in too bad shape. Eric and Diane didn't have foul weather gear but they took it all in stride. They sat out in the cockpit with me for a while getting doused by breaking waves and even went up on the bow for a bit to see if the weight shift would float us off. It didn't. I suggested that they should go below where it was warmer and drier. Eventually they did and passed up the jacket to my foul weather gear so I was pretty well protected. It was just a matter of waiting it out until we floated free.
At long last, we floated/motored free into the Redwood Creek channel and headed home. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful except that with the wind and the tidal current, I managed to scape the piling on one side of my slip. I scraped it hard enough to remove several feet of varnish from the cap rail (the wooden trim rail around the edge of the deck.)
I think that there's nothing wrong with the wind vane that another hundred or so dollars worth of parts won't cure. Everyone who has ever owned a boat is aware of the saying that a boat is just a hole in the water that the owner tries to fill up by throwing in money. I have some of the parts on order and I look forward to getting it all rigged and trying it again.
It will be a blessing if the next time out does not include seasickness and getting stuck in the mud!
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