When I crewed across the Indian Ocean, I spent most of my time aboard a Sundeer — a Daschew designed ultimate cruiser with some pretty awesome electronics. We had two autopilots, some model of Raymarine if I recall correctly. The autopilot would respond to either a heading, or using it’s NMEA interface with the anemometer (wind gauge) you could put it in “windvane” mode. It would steer to a particular degree off the wind. I didn’t fully understand why it was called windvane mode until I helped another cruiser cross from Mauritius to Reunion on a more modest (albeit still sweet) vessel. I think it was a Hans Christian 38.
They had a curious device attached to the stern with what looked like a rudder hanging off the bottom, once we got out of the harbor and into the trades the captain adjusted his course, put a big paddle looking thing on top of the windvane, pointed it into the wind, turned a knob on the wheel and presto. The boat was steering itself, or rather the windvane was steering the boat. No fancy interface, no electricity, just a few lines, the wind and water providing the power to turn the wheel and maintain our angle off the wind. For the next four days watch consisted mostly of tending to the fishing lines and reading thanks to the windvane (and the steady trades).
I knew when I got a boat I was going to get one.
There are many different types and designs — they’ve been around for a while and people even make their own homebrew varieties. On a ketch or yawl you can use the same physics with the mizzen, and on a sloop you can do it with lines and block and tackle. There are even books written on the topic. I elected to play to my strong suits — searching Craigslist relentlessly.
I set up an RSS feed searching Google for “windvane site:craigslist.org” and after a few months came up with one within my budget, under $1000. New they cost anywhere from three to five thousand and up and most people never get rid of them. Since they’re such “simple” technology the essentially last as long as the boat, but occasionally the boat changes hands and the new owner doesn’t plan on cruising, or someone’s circumnavigation is over and they could use the money more than the extra crew member.
I bought an old monitor, a really really really old monitor. It’s the granddaddy of production windvanes. Scanmar and previously Larwyck have been making these things for close to 35 years based on the findings of Around the World Alone races, cruisers and even the companies owner. My unit was one of the first ones made in the engineers garage in Southern California in the 70’s. When I finally unpacked it to install after having it boxed for a year, the thing looked rough – but with a little polish, some new blocks and lines — she’s steering us just fine.
Installation Drawings from Scanmar -- THANKS!
I called Scanmar and they sent me installation drawings from similar boats, I had the first Apache — unless the “Chris Craft 40″ drawings they sent me were from an Apache not a Commanche. I even had them go over my drawings for the lines to the wheel adapter and overall spent about 30 minutes on the phone with them. How’s that for customer service? I bought the product not through them, but from an ad online — at least second hand and 35 years old! It wasn’t even made by Scanmar and was basically a prototype, but they still supported the product. Coming from IT, where most companies won’t support their product after a few years and or sometimes even after their last update it was refreshing to say the least.
We had a good sailing day leaving Yorktown and heading to Deltaville and got a chance to really test out the windvane. It steered in 15 – 20 knots with 4ft swells just fine, took a beating off our arms and gave us a little pride in our slowly-becoming-more-cruiserly boat.
For more info on windvanes check out:
- Scanmar: makers of the Monitor, Sayes Rig, and Autohelm
- Sailomat: a pretty nifty “clean looking” windvane
- Cape Horn: probably the best reviewed windvane along with the Monitor and Aries
- Aries: along with the Monitor, the longest in product windvane, another one you can find used at a reasonable cost