Single Handling with Wheel vs Tiller

[JPA Cate]

^^^^more or less.

1. prepare line on winch for sheeting in
2. turn the fly for the unit to the new wind direction,
3. grab the about-to-be lazy sheet, and as the boat turns through the eye of the wind, cast it off
4. sheet in on the new tack,
5. watch it and see if you need to come up a little or fall off a little, or if it is "just right"
for the nonce
6. On our boat, we would remove the weather helm by compensating with some rudder angle, as needed, and locking the rudder. It was wheel steered. One always tried to keep the boat well balanced.

Mostly, one is coming up or falling off to adjust to shifts in wind direction. The job of the wind pilot is to steer in generally the right direction. It is not as precise as an electronic autopilot. And, as Mike wrote (hi, Mike!), you may want to use a tiller pilot to drive the vane in light airs. It partly depends on the boat as a whole, just how light those airs are going to work out to be. On our first Insatiable, that magic number was 6 arbitrary wind units (close to knots but never calibrated, and of course, wind sheer affects it too). And we also had an electronic autopilot for the wheel, so we would use that, while motoring, or if needed in light airs.

Coastally, it is usually more steady wind direction about 15-20 mi. offshore than it is in close, where land effects will cause shifts. To me, it seems that there are interactions between the shapes of the land and the wind strengths, and that they are more pronounced in stronger winds.

Ann

[GILow]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

^^^^more or less.

1. prepare line on winch for sheeting in
2. turn the fly for the unit to the new wind direction,
3. grab the about-to-be lazy sheet, and as the boat turns through the eye of the wind, cast it off
4. sheet in on the new tack,
5. watch it and see if you need to come up a little or fall off a little, or if it is "just right"
for the nonce
6. On our boat, we would remove the weather helm by compensating with some rudder angle, as needed, and locking the rudder. It was wheel steered. One always tried to keep the boat well balanced.

Mostly, one is coming up or falling off to adjust to shifts in wind direction. The job of the wind pilot is to steer in generally the right direction. It is not as precise as an electronic autopilot. And, as Mike wrote (hi, Mike!), you may want to use a tiller pilot to drive the vane in light airs. It partly depends on the boat as a whole, just how light those airs are going to work out to be. On our first Insatiable, that magic number was 6 arbitrary wind units (close to knots but never calibrated, and of course, wind sheer affects it too). And we also had an electronic autopilot for the wheel, so we would use that, while motoring, or if needed in light airs.

Coastally, it is usually more steady wind direction about 15-20 mi. offshore than it is in close, where land effects will cause shifts. To me, it seems that there are interactions between the shapes of the land and the wind strengths, and that they are more pronounced in stronger winds.

Ann

Thanks Ann. I will finish that auxiliary rudder windvane soon and give all this a try.

[Bowdrie]

Originally Posted by Boatyarddog

Bevel gear and quadrant system, plenty of response, simple design, no cables wire pulleys.

It seems as though, (for purposes of this thread,) that Boatyarddog and I are in a distinct minority.
The Edson bevel gear/quadrant and worm gear units are without doubt some of the best mechanical steering gears ever devised.
Simple devices that could be made by tools that are crude by today's standards.
The basic designs date from the late 1800s and many of them are still in operation that were built in the 1930s.
Island Packet used the bevel gear steering on many of their boats, and it is quite adaptable to double-enders such as Westsail/Alajuela.
For a while Edson made those units set-up for that usage, a tie-rod extending back to the rudderhead.
Both types have no trouble being activated either by autopilot or a pendulum vane, and there is no lost motion from yards of cable under high tension being strung thru the back of the boat festooned with multiple sheaves and bracketry, (that's always willing to cause trouble or fail).
I have the Edson worm gear, tacking is super easy, turn the wheel, (it "mostly" stays where you put it,) winches/cleats/sheets are within an arm's length without moving from the helm. As the boat eases up to the new course, center the wheel, no drama, no fuss, no tiller sweeping the cockpit, and if others are aboard they don't have to move.
The common complaints of "no feel" with these types is BS, it's just more subtle. The geared has good feedback, the worm has less, but you can feel the sweet spot/loading/unloading on the rudder.
I suspect that many of the complaints came from sailing on Tiawan boats that used "knock off" copies of Edson, and were not properly aligned/installed, which causes stiffness and binding.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GILow

Ann, as you know I’ve built an auxiliary vane based on your experience. I’m keeping this home brew unit for the new boat and selling the commercial unit that it came with.

Would you say the tacking method described by seandepagnier above is how you tacked with your setup?

My method, if 'two up' in the cockpit.
The bit of red string you can see in the pic engages and disengages the wind vane.
Pull the red string and place eye hidden behind helmsman over small hook to disengage. To re-engage release red string, bit of bungee pulls things 'back into gear' at the windvane.
So, release wheel steering and take the helm, disengage wind vane.
Crew take up slack on lazy jib sheet.
As she comes through wind I let fly other jib sheet.
Crew sheets in jib muy pronto - before it gets a chance to fill - on the new tack.

Steady on course, sort traveller, re-engage windvane, secure wheel.

If single handed proceed as above except release wheel, engage autopilot, disengage wind vane.
Press two buttons on autopilot to do auto tack.

In that case instead of having the jib sheets on the two primaries which aren't self tailing I would have them on the self tailers and the furling line and mainsheet would be moved onto the after pair of winches. That way everything is within reach of the helmsman from behind the wheel.

Pic shows the winches being used in 'crewed mode' and the after two winches have the storm jib sheets on them out of the way.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

My method, if 'two up' in the cockpit.
The bit of red string you can see in the pic engages and disengages the wind vane.
Pull the red string and place eye hidden behind helmsman over small hook to disengage. To re-engage release red string, bit of bungee pulls things 'back into gear' at the windvane.
So, release wheel steering and take the helm, disengage wind vane.
Crew take up slack on lazy jib sheet.
As she comes through wind I let fly other jib sheet.
Crew sheets in jib muy pronto - before it gets a chance to fill - on the new tack.

Steady on course, sort traveller, re-engage windvane, secure wheel.

If single handed proceed as above except release wheel, engage autopilot, disengage wind vane.
Press two buttons on autopilot to do auto tack.

In that case instead of having the jib sheets on the two primaries which aren't self tailing I would have them on the self tailers and the furling line and mainsheet would be moved onto the after pair of winches. That way everything is within reach of the helmsman from behind the wheel.

Pic shows the winches being used in 'crewed mode' and the after two winches have the storm jib sheets on them out of the way.

Damn fine looking boat mate, no wonder you’ve been missing her.

Your wind vane tacking method is very neat, however I suspect it needs a vertical axis vane to work. I cannot imagine a H vane self aligning the way yours would?

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by GILow

Oddly enough I can find the same thing with my ten year old, somewhat shattered IPad Air. But then maybe I’m not compensating for anything?

I built up my old Windows Vista Tower as a fun project, and to stay current with the young tech's I hire at work.

I spend most of my time doing reports, handling personnel, etc and don't get to do as much tech work as before.

They are in their late 20's and are computer experts having been born in the mid 1990's. I'm going on 70.

And sure you can find this stuff with an iPad or iPhone, but I like a full screen since I'm older. The one I bought for this is 24"

Plus it was fun replacing all the old parts.

The 250 watt Power supply I replaced with a 650 watt

the 168 GB hard drive I replaced with a solid state 500 GB (actually the 168 GB drive I reinstalled as a backup)

The Vista Motherboard had only two 512 MB Memory Sticks or 1 GB RAM!! That's an example of how fast Computer Technology is changing. You have to work to keep up.

Now with all the Hacker Harry's out there we have to handle Cyber Security as well.

New 11th generation Intel i5 Chip with 6 Cores capable of speeds to 4.2 GHZ

ASRock 510 MicroATX Motherboard capable of 64 GB Ram (DDR4) but I just have put in two 8 GB sticks so far which is 8 GB more than I have ever had

It supports water pump cooling also

Getting the chip and it's cooling fan installed was interesting also plus using all the old hookups from the 2004 Tower Case

https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/H510M-HDVM.2/index.asp

Then there was formatting the drives and loading the software, drivers, antivirus, and Windows updates which always causes some head scratching but I got it

I also bought some Bose speakers for it so it's Cadillac as compared to an iPad. In other words your iPad is subpar compared to this beast I built.

I did get a motherboard with onboard graphics though to save on the cost of a video card as I'm not a "Gamer." My online game is chess not these new computer action games.

[hpeer]

Gilow,

Out of curiosity did you build your aux van unit based on a design by Bill Belcher?

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GILow

Damn fine looking boat mate, no wonder you’ve been missing her.

Your wind vane tacking method is very neat, however I suspect it needs a vertical axis vane to work. I cannot imagine a H vane self aligning the way yours would?

Q???
How do engage and disengage your windvane?

[Mike OReilly]

I don't tack using the windvane. Ours is an Aries, and it would be too slow.

When I want to tack, I disengage the tiller from the vane, do the tack, then bring the vane back to balance, and reengage. With the tiller, it's a simple matter of unhooking the chain connection.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Gilow,

Out of curiosity did you build your aux van unit based on a design by Bill Belcher?

In part, yes. I had a few books, his included, and trawled through them all. I was mainly after numbers, to get the various ratios right. I can’t remember which bits Belcher supplied, but he may have been the one that made me understand the importance of positive feedback.

My device is, as yet, incomplete, having only the rudder and trim tab, no wind vane. But I have used it to steer the Swanson using my fingers instead of a vane and it was extraordinarily effective. Can’t wait to see how it goes when it is complete.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Q???

How do engage and disengage your windvane?

I don’t know, I haven’t got to that bit yet. (See my response to hpeer above.)

I really like your idea, but I wonder if a horizontal vane would self align well enough to overcome any friction. Maybe it would with a bit of rake on it, but from memory (again, the numbers from various books are blurring here) about 15 degrees of rake was the maximum recommended and that was to decrease sensitivity of the vane which will otherwise hunt like crazy.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by thomm225

I built up my old Windows Vista Tower as a fun project, and to stay current with the young tech's I hire at work.

I spend most of my time doing reports, handling personnel, etc and don't get to do as much tech work as before.

They are in their late 20's and are computer experts having been born in the mid 1990's. I'm going on 70.

And sure you can find this stuff with an iPad or iPhone, but I like a full screen since I'm older. The one I bought for this is 24"

Plus it was fun replacing all the old parts.

The 250 watt Power supply I replaced with a 650 watt

the 168 GB hard drive I replaced with a solid state 500 GB (actually the 168 GB drive I reinstalled as a backup)

The Vista Motherboard had only two 512 MB Memory Sticks or 1 GB RAM!! That's an example of how fast Computer Technology is changing. You have to work to keep up.

Now with all the Hacker Harry's out there we have to handle Cyber Security as well.

New 11th generation Intel i5 Chip with 6 Cores capable of speeds to 4.2 GHZ

ASRock 510 MicroATX Motherboard capable of 64 GB Ram (DDR4) but I just have put in two 8 GB sticks so far which is 8 GB more than I have ever had

It supports water pump cooling also

Getting the chip and it's cooling fan installed was interesting also plus using all the old hookups from the 2004 Tower Case

https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/H510M-HDVM.2/index.asp

Then there was formatting the drives and loading the software, drivers, antivirus, and Windows updates which always causes some head scratching but I got it

I also bought some Bose speakers for it so it's Cadillac as compared to an iPad. In other words your iPad is subpar compared to this beast I built.

I did get a motherboard with onboard graphics though to save on the cost of a video card as I'm not a "Gamer." My online game is chess not these new computer action games.

Please stop, you are embarrassing yourself.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I don't tack using the windvane. Ours is an Aries, and it would be too slow.

When I want to tack, I disengage the tiller from the vane, do the tack, then bring the vane back to balance, and reengage. With the tiller, it's a simple matter of unhooking the chain connection.

Mike, do you think this is a product of the Aries wind vane or, like me, do you have a boat that is a little “leisurely” in its helm response?

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by GILow

Mike, do you think this is a product of the Aries wind vane or, like me, do you have a boat that is a little “leisurely” in its helm response?

My boat certainly takes her own sweet time making any directional change. She definitely wants to keep going straight .

But the Aries (my version anyway) is slow to shift vane angle. The vane rotates on a notched base that requires one to shift, notch-by-notch. Each shift requires a pull on the control line. I've never counted or measured the angle change for each notch, but it's only a few degrees, so you really gotta move fast to keep up with a tack through 90+ degrees.

On my boat, I have a tiller break which can hold an angle, so I find it easier just to disengage the vane, move the tiller, let it rest at the break, then sheet the jib. Once I'm settled on the new tack I reset the vane.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by GILow

Please stop, you are embarrassing yourself.

You have no response then except elementary school attacks on me personally.

I'm starting to see a pattern with you guys that lack technical and sailing knowledge and here it is again.

You don't have to get defensive if you lack the skills though as most older folks are weak with computers, software, and cyber not to mention solar as well as electrical and electronics

It sort of sad to see an older person though with so little learned over all these years that can only attack the individual but not his argument.

Why not try to learn something rather than attack those with more knowledge.

This site offers free prep exams for those seeking certifications in Computer/phone hardware troubleshooting, Networks, and Cyber which at least one cert is required for most jobs these days even for management

As I guy that majored in History, I really enjoyed these courses. (minor in Math and Computer Science!)

Even if you don't need the cert, you might possibly learn something.

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https://exampremium.com/comptia-a-220-1001/