Best Wheel Autopilot for C30 ??

[Stu Jackson]

........ so I've only tried it by using the heading and pushing the Auto button.
It seems to me to lag quite a bit before correcting and tends to steer too late and then has to overshoot and within a couple of minutes I'm all over the place.

I don't have a lot of experience, but how well are these things supposed to work?

RTFM If you don't have it download it. There are gain settings that you can adjust to "dial in" the appropriate responses of the ap for your boat. Also do some research on "The Catalina Cocktail" - an old phrase used for settings that work really well. Good luck.

 

[Doug4bass]

As far as coupling the A/P to chart or wind (I guess they call that "networking"now.).....it's heading only for me. Keeps me in the loop. As far as I'm concerned George is there to assist ME. Tried the other way one summer. Too many surprises with wind shifts, track hunting, and waypoints. Makes you lazy. And I guess thats the problem i have with the copilots I fly with these days. .

Oh, and which autopilot? The Ray ST 4000 worked flawlessly on my C270 for years on end. Except for "networking".

 

[Inthwtr]

I have a Simrad WP32 that I have beat the tar out of and still never lets me down. I am not sure if they make it anymore though..

 

[rikker]

Re: Raymarine ST4000

Hey jonelli,
I just joined this forum today and just bought the same boat 3 days ago with the same wheel pilot. I searched and downloaded the st 4000 manual http://www.manualslib.com/manual/138185/Raymarine-Autopilot-Plus-St4000Plus.html
The sailboat is in previous owner's storage buiding right now. The previous owner says the autohelm worked fine. There is also a Magellan Nav6500 chartplotter on the boat and I do not know if the st4000 trades information with that or not. I am going to check the wiring and talk to previous owner this afternoon. I want to get a Garmin GPSMAP 741sx chartplotter and am going to see if I can network the old ST400 and TriData ST60 (SeaTalk 0183 with Garmin gWind (NMEA 2000). with the new 741sx. It is great to find this forum for Catalina 30 saiors. Rick

 

[C30skpr]

Hey All, Don't mean to hijack this, but I have the Raymarine ST4000 wheel pilot that came with my 87 MkII I purchased last year. It's not connected to the GPS (but I read that it could), so I've only tried it by using the heading and pushing the Auto button. It seems to me to lag quite a bit before correcting and tends to steer too late and then has to overshoot and within a couple of minutes I'm all over the place. I don't have a lot of experience, but how well are these things supposed to work?

Did you install a Rudder Reference??

 

[PineyWoods]

I have used the Raymarine wheel pilot and currently have an ST2000+ tiller pilot, both of which were interfaced to the GPS. These units, at least, simply don't work that way.

When steering a route, the unit beeps at you when it comes to the next turn and requires user confirmation before it will actually execute the turn. It will not just mindlessly make the next turn.

So true, at a 0.1 nm from the turn, I recall, but you must be looking ahead rather than showing your beloved how to confirm the new course!

Back in '94 in our new Gemini 34 deep down in the Bahamas on a plotted route back N , we used a chart waypoint for the turn around a sandbank. Just as she pushed the button, we heard a sickening, prolonged ripping sound on the Stbd side, and saw a pipe about a foot above water with a ragged angle iron welded across the top pass behind us - not visible when we looked ahead at the route-change tone - and leaving a 12' gash about half-way through the laminate. It was probably the remains of a mark downed by a hurricane, and not noted on the chart we used. Another 5-6 ft to the Port, and we would have had to call it our "petard' - well and truly hoisted upon it! And this was in the days of GPS 300' ambiguity. We must have hit the sine-wave right at the null point there.

We've also been taught a lesson or two using wind-point control, sailing off the wind as deep as the headsail would fly - about 135 deg. - one truly life-threatening, but that's another yarn. Just don't do it. At night, crossing the Gulf of Mexico; or any time, rounding Pt. Conception! The response to a sudden wind shift or the odd wave is just too slow. Upwind can be hard on you and the boat, but the autopilot loves it; downwind works the hell out of it, and is potentially deadly.

Pete

 

[PineyWoods]

In olden/golden days nearly 20 years ago I installed an Autohelm wheel autopilot to my old '79 C30 and sailed solo to Costa Rica from MdR, CA...

It worked flawlessly, but again it has been 20 years and i did not saila small boat since then..
Then today I made an offer on a '85 C30...
This one doesn't have an autopilot and if they accept my offer, I was wondering which model is preferred autopilot in these days for a C30?

Thanks guys,

In about the same time , in '96 we bought a '93 37' Fountain-Pajot cat. out of charter in Seattle several years after early retirement. I outfitted it w/ an Autopilot-4000 wheelpilot, watermaker, Radar, SSB, etc while my wife was recovering from hip replacement surgery in Oakland. After a glorious summer/fall in the Canadian Gulf Is., Desolation Sound, and north to 50 deg. lat. at Vancouver Is. Alert Bay, we headed south bound for 50 deg. N on the E. Coast - about mid-Newfoundland.

Fast-forward to midway between the Cape Cod Canal and Maine waters several years in '99, and about 15,000 NM later, the damn autopilot, which had performed perfectly with the 10,000 # cat, up and quit on a dark and stormy passage! Now being the prudent mariner, I had a spare AP motor, and installed it when daylight broke. To my horror, still didn't work - the control head was dead. The two weeks layup in SW Harbor and I finally got a replacement - the entire $1000 Wheelpilot unit, as they weren't piecing it out. The delay effectively killed our goal of reaching 50 deg. N lat. on the E coast, as we turned back S at the top of the Bras de'Or lakes of Nova Scotia due to late autumn storms further north.

It turns out that my neglecting to install the 10 amp. in-line fuse that came with it, and depending on the F-P's 15 amp circuit breaker to protect it, was the culprit: the long-overworked motor's shorting out simple drew too much current through the head and killed it. The moral: just install ALL the parts!

The RayMarine Wheelpilot 4000, which seems unchanged from Autohelms original is a great product - and my current C30's unit is my 4th - a Gemini 34 and a Herreshoff Meadowlark 37 leeboard ketch I restored, in addition to the F-P cat. All otherwise totally trouble-free.

Pete

 

[jonelli]

RTFM If you don't have it download it. There are gain settings that you can adjust to "dial in" the appropriate responses of the ap for your boat. Also do some research on "The Catalina Cocktail" - an old phrase used for settings that work really well. Good luck.

Ok holy crap. I put in the "Catalina Cocktail" settings and it went from drunken sailor mode to I can go take a nap mode!!!!!

For reference here are settings:
Rudder Gain 2, Response 2, Auto trim 2, Drive type 2

But I still have an issue that every now and then it says "low batt" but still tries and usually works and goes back to normal but after a while it had a hard time turning to starboard. I think the belt might be sticking or slipping.