Windvane steering and an extra rudder

[TimHunter340]

Hello
I am about to do more extended sailing. At first I was going to upgrade my autopilot, but now I am thinking windvane steering. I live in Tampa and just saw that a larger hunter lost it's rudder and was abandoned at sea. I guess it had a plastic rudder post. Anyway a wind vane can also cover emergency rudder issues. Any thoughts on this and what should I buy? The transom of my hunter 340 has the swim ladder amidships so it would need to be off center.

Thanks.

 

[Stu Jackson]

Poke around here. They're in California, but the info is very good

http://selfsteer.com/

 

[Bill Roosa]

Wind vane also helps with the electrical consumption issues.

 

[heritage]

If your main concern is steering after a rudder failure you might consider this: http://bermudarace.com/emergency-steering-drogue-new-approach/

 

[pabraam]

There are 3 things that will cripple your sailboat: loosing your mast, loosing your keel or loosing your rudder. The first one can be solved by jury-rigging, the second one means game over (certainly mid-ocean), the third one lies somewhere in between. For my planned roundtrip Atlantic (Ocean) I have installed a HYDROVANE, which by the way works like a charm! For redundancy reasons I choose this particular system since it is standalone and has its own rudder. Bringing a spare mast or keel is undoable but having a spare rudder this way...... Having it off-centre is no problem (see attached photo).