a couple of questions

[roverhi]

Ebay and Craig's List or their Euro equivalents often have used tiller pilots and self steering vanes. Bought my WindPilot Pacific Light for $700 and a Navico 10 tiller pilot for $150.

[modernviking]

JPA cate: Doesn't have a AIS yet but will surely be installed at some point. found the book by Letcher. might buy a early christmass present ;-)

Gordmay: Thank you :-)

Akprb: well i mainly use paper charts and my tablet with navionics. my garmin 128 needs a new chart and internal battery soo..

ArmyDaveNY: Thank you :-) at first i'm going to sail different single hand regattas in Denmark ranging from 140 to 216 nm, before participating in the hardest single hand regatta in Denmark with 630nm to sail. definitely going to try that system out when she gets back in the water. the chandlries you mentioned always worth looking at thanks :-)

Uncle G: Nice, lots of reading thanks :-) can't wait to be done with my exams then!

Michaeld: i will check it out. already downloaded his story, I also had a guest teacher at my school who also cirgumnavigated solo, what a trip just... WOW!

TrentePieds: Tak :-) It's more like a slightly bigger folkboat with more comfort. going to try that out next spring. She does have a tiller so that will make it easier. Of course! might be young but still have common sense. I would never dare to sail pass Helsingør/Helsingborg only relying on the self-steering! I do have access to a workshop with good tools, so I just need to be sure what to do with the materials.

well i also need to sleep sometimes, a anchor alarm would be nice to have, just in case you know. the places i would anchor would primarly be sheltered places because i would also sail with my family and they are not that familiar with sailing yet soo, when dropping the anchor for the night it need to be good sheltered place.

Thank you all for your advice, tips and tricks, can't wait to try them out the next season
-Modernviking

[jacktheflyer]

I like Sailsafe for an anchor alert. tried anchor queen and a couple of others and like this one the best.
Scrubby

[Jim Cate]

G'Day MV,

I've been following this thread and would like to add a few thoughts of my own...

As background, some years ago I did a few years of single hand ocean racing out of San Francisco. The boat was a Yankee-30, a Sparkman and Stephens design, so similar in size to your boat. Our races were mostly day races, 35 to 90 miles or so in duration, and other than starts and finishes, were in the open ocean rather than complicated piloting areas.

So, a few comments re your questions:

Trimming to self steer and sheet to tiller schemes are useful, but IMO not adequate in a racing environment. They rely upon fairly constant conditions to be successful, and so are not useful for sail changes or spinnaker sets or strikes. You really need something that will steer the boat while you go through such evolutions, and those simple schemes will not do so.

So, you need some form of proper self steering. I am a great fan of vane type steering systems... for cruising! In a racing environment, not so much, for they are heavy (and in a bad place for weight) and add significant drag. On our previous cruising boat (which was a retired IOR one-tonner) I designed and built an auxiliary rudder type wind vane, and it steered us for thousands of miles. But, it added on the order of 75 kg clear astern and slowed the boat noticeably under some conditions.

In your case, a simple tiller pilot will be adequate to steer under most conditions, and that's what I'd recommend you consider. I don't know what sort of helm loads your boat develops, but I'd expect a mid-sized unit would do. After all, the main need for the a/p is for sail changes, spinnaker sets/strikes and potty breaks, not for the bulk of the time racing... at least for the shorter races where you will not be taking sleep breaks from steering. So, you need neither great power nor sophisticated steering algorithms. Simply steering a constant compass course will suffice. A more modern a/p, such as the big time solo racers use in open 60s and so forth would be nice, but at a 10x or more cost hike. FWIW, I used an Autohelm 2000 quite successfully on my boat,back in 1981-84. The power requirements for such pilots is quite small, and you will be hand steering most of the time.

I'd strongly recommend that you investigate the Single Hand Sailing Society of San Francisco. It is a group that sponsors and promotes s/h sailing, and they have a good web-site with its own forum, and various publications that should be useful to you.

I much enjoyed my time as a s/h racer and feel that I learned a lot that was applicable to our later years as long term cruisers. It is both challenging and rewarding... and sometimes scary as hell!

I'd be happy to try and answer further questions if you wish.

Jim

[KP44]

I've seen a lot about do-it-yourself windvane steering. Do some web searches. Or visit scanmar and see what they have in their archives.