Quick v Seakeeper

rubberduck

rubberduck

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We are in the process of deciding which gyro to fit on new boat.

Quick:
Smaller, but heavier
Cheaper
Easier to fit
less need for maintenance (anodes etc.)
No need for through hull holes for cooling etc.
Unproven but apparently effective, very few reviews.

Seakeeper:
Market leader
Larger but lighter (will just fit)
Lots of positive reviews
Advanced tech, more to go wrong ?
Stories of failed bearings (lack of cooling ??)
Best practice to cool during spool down (but not essential, (bearings) ??)
Very effective.
A lot more money (not a big concern but is going in a used boat.)

Which way to go ?
 
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When I talked to the people at the gyro stands the Quick man said I definitely needed two units while the Seakeeper guy said only one needed. While one maybe over cautious and the other over optimistic it may be wise to get an actual assessment and quote from both technicians in case they are not equally effective in your hull
 
I'll follow with interest, my next boat will have a gyro.

Does the Quick have annual service, I noticed the Seakeeper's have a yearly schedule now.
 
RD I think you know that I was faced with the same decision earlier this year and I went with the Seakeeper. For me the dealbreaker with the Quick unit was the weight. On a like for like basis it was about 250kg heavier. Thats a lot of extra weight to be lugging around especially if its in the wrong place ie some way off the CoG. The reason for the extra weight is obvious. The Quick unit spins at a much lower RPM and needs a heavier flywheel to develop similar torque compared to the SK. There were a few other things I didnt like about the Quick as well. Unlike the SK it doesnt operate in a vacuum enclosure (which is why it spins slower) so I was concerned about noise (my SK has proved to be very quiet) and the Quick has a very rudimentary mechanical system for controlling the precessing which to my mind might limit its effectiveness compared to the sophisticated precess control system of the SK. Then there was the service or lack of. After an initial contact and an indication of discount, the Quick rep never came back to me with the answers I was looking for and for me that didnt bode well for after sales back up. In contrast the SK European rep was very attentive and they have dealers everywhere now who can do the fitting

So overall whilst I'm glad to see that SK have competition, I just thought the SK was a far more sophisticated and proven product with an established sales and service network and that basically I was getting what I was paying for. I really didnt want to be a guinea pig for either the Quick product or its service back up. Of course 8 months on you might be getting a better vibe from Quick than I did

As I say my SK has been very quiet and also faultless so far. Whichever one you go for, make sure your gennie is in good order because its going to be working very hard keeping the gyro going on passage as well as at rest. Btw dont expect any gyro to stabilise the boat at planing speed coz it wont. Its great at rest and at slow D speed but the faster you go the less effect the gyro has. For me though the stabilisation at rest was the main reason for fitting the gyro
 
Anders_P42 said:
Does the Quick have annual service, I noticed the Seakeeper's have a yearly schedule now.
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Be aware that the sacrificial anode in the SK may need changing more often than annually. Mine was shot after just 4 months
 
That's the very same doubt which popped to my mind.
If stabilization were high in my priorities list, I'd rather go for a different type of boat, to start with.
Then again, I wish RD a very successful installation, whatever his final choice will be.
It'll be interesting to follow the project! :encouragement:
 
A friend has a Seakeeper 5 in a 52' flybridge - just about the limit of it's ability.

Generator needs to run at anchor of course - but that's why he fitted it.
 
Main reason for install is slow speed cruising, SWMBO does not like 37 knts all the time, neither does she enjoy rocking about. We have had one person so far on the forum with a quick installation, which raised weight concerns, although that boat was under powered to start, which ours definitely isn't. Having said that, if top end goes from 37 to say 35, does that put strain on the engines ? The difference in weight of the two gyros is approx 100kg
 
The sea keeper is the more advanced product and is excellent at what it does. The company is going like a train. The Quick is a bought in product that feels quite a lot inferior but that is first impression and hearsay.

Thing is, a 47 sports cruiser is difficult to stabilise. Beautiful boat of course, but she will have a v short roll period at rest and plenty of dynamic stability underway. Remember "dynamic stability" isn't a great thing. It means the boat will be held hard level to the water surface, not to the horizon. As you sail in a beam sea the boat will roll as the waves pass underneath (rather than in the oscillating pendulum way that you experience at anchor), because the hull only knows where the water surface is and cannot know where the horizon is. The forces needed to tilt the hull relative to the water surface, so keeping you level to the horizon, are very large, and the more dynamic stability the boat has the larger they need to be. Gyros produce far less torque underway than fins, and this is why gyros don't work as well underway, as Deleted User has reported. Their trump card is at-anchor stabilisation.

At rest, you need a gyro on the abs 47 because a fin will struggle to react fast enough. A gyro needs no reaction time- it reacts due to laws of physics not due to any computer telling it. Given the far superior precession control system in the sea keeper (compared with Quick) I would want seakeeper on a 47 footer. I might care less on an 87 footer.

But bottom line is that neither of those gyros is going to help much while underway. Will help a bit of course, but don't expect the miracles you get with fins. At rest, the roll period in abs 47 is far shorter than 147 so the precession can be allowed to happen fast. Underway the waves are same size in a 47 as in a 147 and you need stabilisation that lasts for say 2-4 seconds wave period rather than 1 second at-anchor roll period. A small gyro isn't going to do a lot if its action is spread over 3 seconds. Remember with a gyro you can have a lot of torque for a short time interval or very little torque for a longer time, whereas with a fin you can have far more torque and you can have it all day long. That's why fins are far far superior underway.

If you want stabilised boating underway then abs47 with gyro won't do it. Abs47 with fins will, but that requires I guess some installation challenges/ impossibilities. If you really want Abs47 then I would at least consider whether the smallest Sleipner fins will fit, using the very neat/small rack/pinion actuators. Fitting that hardware will be ok; the challenge is running the hydraulic hoses. Underway, a fin stabilised boat is pretty awesome. You will be amazed the first time you try it and you switch them on/off to compare. With a gyro stabilsed abs 47 underway you will struggle to notice the difference on some occasions, though it will be awesome at anchor.

U.K. boating seems to be about going port to port not anchoring, unlike the Med. That's why I'm giving the above warning.
 
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Anode - replaced mine (seakeeper 5) after 6 months. Half gone.

Generator - I dont really notice the generator running when at anchor. For the med a must have for me now and any new boat in the future.

Stabilisation underway - faster you go the less effective the gyro is. Next boat i will probably spec both fins and gyro. few years before i do that though!
 
rubberduck said:
Main reason for install is slow speed cruising,
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Prepare to be slightly disappointed then because as I say, in my experience, the SK gyro works great at rest but as soon as you start moving the gyro cannot overcome the dynamic stability developed by the hull. To give you some idea, at idle speed in our boat (6.5kts), the gyro has already lost some of its effectiveness and by 10kts it has little if any effect. TBH I think SK are guilty of overselling their product. They claim it "eliminates boat roll". Well it does but only when the boat is at rest or moving slowly. If you look at all the SK promo videos they inevitably show boats at rest, not moving, and that tells its own story. I guess you could expect better stabilisation under way if you went for a gyro that was a size bigger than recommended but then youre into extra cost and weight of course. If you really want stabilisation under way, consider fins
 
Deleted User said:
Prepare to be slightly disappointed then because as I say, in my experience, the SK gyro works great at rest but as soon as you start moving the gyro cannot overcome the dynamic stability developed by the hull. To give you some idea, at idle speed in our boat (6.5kts), the gyro has already lost some of its effectiveness and by 10kts it has little if any effect. TBH I think SK are guilty of overselling their product. They claim it "eliminates boat roll". Well it does but only when the boat is at rest or moving slowly. If you look at all the SK promo videos they inevitably show boats at rest, not moving, and that tells its own story. I guess you could expect better stabilisation under way if you went for a gyro that was a size bigger than recommended but then youre into extra cost and weight of course. If you really want stabilisation under way, consider fins
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That's interesting Mike. Whilst I agree that the gyro does little at planing speeds, ours is still very effective at all displacement speeds, to the point that we'll happily cook and serve a meal whilst underway at 8-9 kts. IIRC you have a SK9 on a 35T boat? We have SK8 on a 26T boat, which is obviously more turning moment per tonne of boat weight, so maybe that's what makes the difference.

I can't say I really miss the stabilisation much at planing speeds, as it's not the lean of the boat per se that bothers me, it's the violent swinging from one side to the other in a beam sea at rest or disp speed. We don't go out in rough sea though, and of course I've not lived with a fin stabilised boat to know what i'm missing.

edit: on the bearing failure point, i'm in no rush to defend Seakeeper as I thought they could have contributed more to my repair than they did, but I do seem to be an isolated case. I couldn't find any other internet traffic about SK bearing failures, despite them having 5,000 units in the field, some now over 10 years old. They didn't make any attempt to keep me quiet on the issue either, so there's no reason to think that lots have failed but SK have kept a lid on it.
 
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Nick_H said:
That's interesting Mike. Whilst I agree that the gyro does little at planing speeds, ours is still very effective at all displacement speeds, to the point that we'll happily cook and serve a meal whilst underway at 8-9 kts. IIRC you have a SK9 on a 35T boat? We have SK8 on a 26T boat, which is obviously more turning moment per tonne of boat weight, so maybe that's what makes the difference.
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Thats a fair comment actually which is why I made the point about going up a size in gyro. My boat is around 63ft long, 39t dry and beamy too. If you look at the spec for the SK9, as fitted to my boat, it says for boats max 59ft long and max 30t weight. Right from the start I questioned this with SK and they assured me that their recommendations were extremely conservative and they showed me examples of boats similar in size and weight to mine fitted with SK9 units. For me, I was finally convinced when I went to this year's Dusseldorf boat show and saw a Ferretti 700 (70ft obviously) fitted with a SK9 so I thought that if Ferretti think its good enough for a 700 then its good enough for my Ferretti 630

I have to say now though that if I was speccing a 63 footer from new and I wanted stabilisation under way as well as at rest, I would think very hard about going a size bigger than the SK9 or ditching the whole idea of a gyro altogether and fitting fins. For my boating use in the Med though, stabilisation at anchor was the main priority and for that the SK9 is just fine
 
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