boat brands - prejudice or reality

[Marsali_1]

Although I am generally in favour of a tiller for boats of this size, a wheel is actually more comfortable for a downwind passage of any length. My 34 with a tiller is not hard to steer downwind, but holding the helm while turning to look forward soon becomes a strain, and I would regularly end up with a stiff neck. You might say use an autopilot, but for me this is not what sailing is about.

Our boat has tiller steering but I had a Cape Horn (https://caphorn.com/en/capehorn-eng/) windvane self-steering system installed in 2007 which has made life much more tolerable in all subsequent long distance passages. It has a nifty little attachment point for any of the piston type tiller pilots. To use it you remove the wind vane and attach the tiller pilot and, since the tiller pilot is operating the same part as the windvane (from a different angle) it doesn't require a lot of force to deflect the Cape Horn servo paddle which is what exerts the needed force on the lines to the tiller. A clever, simple and relatively maintenance free system. If you click on the "Documentation" button at the top of the main page it takes you to the Owner's Manual which illustrates how it works. I use the wind vane to operate the self steering far more than the tiller pilot but the latter has its occasional uses (motoring through calms, for example).