Autopilot woes

mrangry

mrangry

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Hi folks not been on for some time but just purchased a new (to me) Beneteau 440 which requires some attention. She is currently in Wales and will be sailing her up to the Clyde in a few weeks time.

I have been down carrying out some remedial work prior to moving her. Most of this involved hours of rewiring just to get all the basics operational and removing bodged add-ons and poor connections. The boat has an old Simrad wp30 wheel pilot (long discontinued), which although powering up, didn't do anything more. I removed the unit and brought it home to investigate further. Upon stripping the unit down I quickly realised that water ingress has destroyed the 12v motor. The rest of the unit appears ok.

I really dont fancy doing the trip without any form of autopilot so am keen to sort something out without throwing thousands at it. I am thinking if I can identify the 12v motor then a replacement may be straightforward? I have however searched online but drawn a blank. I then found out that a wheel pilot is actually not suitable for a boat of this displacement and searching online for a new complete set up with linear control is just short of 3k. I have also searched online for any used gear but there only seems to be parts.

I think I know the answer here is to bite the bullet and either throw 3k at it or manually helm for the whole journey. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
 
I’m no expert but have just had my autopilot motor (1971) repaired by a specialist on the south coast. Why not just get yours re-wound by an auto electrician? There’s nothing complicated about them and it will save you a bunch of money. I replaced the course computer and control head and the whole lot cost me just over £2k, I suspect you could get a rewind or whatever for a couple of hundred quid.
 
Or have another go at finding a replacement motor? Simrad did not make their own, so there ought to be some generic OEM 12v motor that fits in the space and has a similar current rating.

Pete
 
I would agree that a wheel pilot is probably under powered for a boat of this size. There are other disadvantages as (in my experience) they create significant drag on the wheel even when not in use.
A below deck unit driving the quadrant will be more powerful and also gives you back up steering in the event of cable failure.
Also a modern unit will have much smarter electronics and algorithms and use less power.
But it will be (much?) more expensive!

If you don't anticipate using the autopilot much once you reach your home port and can get the wheel pilot repaired this is a pragmatic short term fix, but in reality any money spent on this will probably be wasted in the longer term.

Another alternative is to take one or two extra crew, although I personally wouldn't be too keen on doing this trip knowing that I would have to hand steer the whole way.

My experience may be biased as I sail solo or with inexperienced crew frequently so need a 100% reliable auto pilot.
 
As has been said, a wheel pilot is woefully underpowered for such a comparatively large boat. Whilst it appears tempting to source and fit a new motor, it’s probably throwing good money after bad as the thing will never do the job very well. The other thing to consider is that you’ve identified the motor as being shot: are you confident that that’s the full extent of the problems with the autopilot? You could go to some trouble to source a new or rewound motor only to discover that the controller is shot as well.
I think you should replace the autopilot as a whole with a new or second hand one.
 
It won't be a rewind job if it's been seriously wet, you want a new motor.
Wheel pilot can work OK on a sursprisingly big boat if the rudder is a suitable design and you only want it for 'light duties ' such as motoring head to wind while you put the sails up, or motoring in flat seas.
I would imagine the motor might be pretty similar to that from a cordless drill.
But if enough water has got in to destroy the motor, I would not be surprised if the electronics were also shot.
You could at least cobble such a motor into the circuit to see if the unit has any chance of working?
There are lots of 12V motors on ebay with dimensioned drawings.

Personally I'd be fairly happy to do such a trip with no autopilot, provided there's at least three on board.
Just make sure people know what they are signing up for, some people don't mind actually sailing the boat.

I've sailed with a wheelpilot, the problem wasn't really the lack of power, more the electronics setup wasn't very good, the thing never really did a good job. It mostly got used as a wheel lock.
It tended to either fidget a lot sawing the wheel from side to side, or not respond to waves knocking the boat off course for a while and then over-react. Might have been faulty. I recall spending most of a channel crossing fiddling with settings plip-plip plip on the buttons.
If I couldn't fix it for £20, I'd probably not bother.
 
If you have the money, get a modern, below deck auto-pilot installed - appropriate to the boat size. It sounds like you need it anyway.

With a boat that size you will need to steer by hand in anything approaching strong wind or moderate waves .... a wheel pilot just thrashes around and sounds very unhappy in such conditions, I switch mine off and steer by hand out of mechanical sympathy. The thought of trusting it to stay head to wind while putting sails up or reefing in a heavy sea would fill me with dread.
 
That A/P was not very good when new & poorly made, i complained in the warranty period & it expired after the first year, Simrad replaced it & i px d it for a AH 6000 onboard unit
 
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