Sailing around the world on a budget

[Sea Change]

Looking back at Halcyon's opening post- minimum budget to sail round the world- I would say that a windvane, despite the cost, is likely to be essential on a low budget circumnavigating boat.
Such a boat will not be large enough to meet the electrical demands of an autopilot without constant recourse to an engine or generator, nor is it likely to carry enough crew for hand helming to be a viable option.
Fortunately there are plenty of cheaper windvanes out there suitable for smaller boats. The Hebridean is a good example.I sold my Navik was £750 and it subsequently did an Atlantic crossing with the new owner.

 

[BobnLesley]

...I'm a bit spoiled because my previous servo pendulum system was absolutely foolproof. So I was expecting a bit more from the Hydrovane.

I have no problem getting the boat balanced to the point where she almost steers herself. I found that this often meant putting a reef in the main to avoid too much weather helm.

The Hydrovane probably steered us for 80% of the crossing...

My two penn'th, starting with the bias admission:: We used a Monitor windvane and loved it; the most used/useful piece of kit aboard: On our Atlantic crossing, the Monitor was steering before we'd cleared the outer harbour in Mindello, Cape Verde; other than the two hours when Lesley helmed (and I fixed a broken control line/block on the windvane) and then the final windless 14 hours that we motored into French Guiana, it never got disconnected the whole way... Is it any wonder that I'm biased in favour?

Based on my experience and observations, I believe that servo-pendulum units provide a stronger steering action than the Hydrovane system does; though the power of servo-pendulums deteriorates as their control line lengths are extended, so that difference might be less noticeable on a centre rather than a stern cockpit yacht?
Windvanes work better on smaller/slower yachts than they do bigger ones, this was especially noticeable in lighter winds. The Monitor (all of them?) is a one-size fits all unit for boats up to 70', so the smaller the boat is, the further within the vane's maximum capacity it is operating.
Windvanes also seem to work better on long-fin/full keeled yachts than they do on short-deep fin yachts. I guess that's perhaps true of autohelms too? When offshore in big seas, the increased directional stability from that full keel gives the unit a 'head start' when it comes to maintaining your course.
Windvanes like a sail plan which favours the headsail, your needing to reef down the main sail seems to be a common theme (ours would handle full mainsail with the genoa, but needed reefing if we were using the working jib) Perhaps why we found ours to work so well was that we had twin headsails and preferred to use those; we have made several extended passages where the mainsail rarely/never got raised.
Both windvanes and autohelms only function well in about 85% of conditions; with a wind vane that difficult 15% is when the apparent wind drops below 8-10 knots whereas with autohelms they struggle when the wind (and associated seas) get above 25-30 knots - those are the conditions when your wind vane will be operating at its best! Now I've always found that hand-helming (or better still, connecting the autohelm; we had both) in 6-8 knots of wind and flat seas is not too onerous... Boring, but not onerous; however, when it's blowing 30+ knots and the spray's flying I find watching the Monitor doing the job from the top step of the companionway and beneath the sprayhood is a lot more fun than being out in the cockpit hand steering.

 

[capnsensible]

My idea of hell.

But I find steering (unless racing or doing close quarters manoeuvres) utterly tedious.

I’ll very occasionally steer to windward for a bit but we try not to sail hard on the wind if we can possibly avoid it. .

Character building.

 

[dunedin]

I know what I’ve seen in my local supermarket. What a ridiculous thing to say, you have no way to know what my local shops have or charge.

To be fair, it was not Tranona but indeed you that was claiming to state the price of butter "in the UK" was £3, implying this was rhe common UK price not just "your local shop".

 

[john_morris_uk]

Character building.

After six months at Lympstone I decided my character was quite big enough thank you.

 

[yello]

I wish I could sail around the world but im tied down right now

 

[MisterBaxter]

I used to own a gaff cutter that would steer itself on any point of sail except a run, albeit with some loss of speed on all points and by no means in all conditions. It was also hard to get it to hold to an exact course - it would steer itself on roughly your chosen point of sail, but choose its own exact heading. It was nevertheless a very useful trick for coastal sailing. But it was a hard boat to steer on a dead run even by hand, once the wind got up. I can't imagine that a windvane wold have coped with it very well, although it might have been a different story with big twin foresails or some other more balanced rig. A running squaresail would have been fun, as described by Claud Worth.

 

[veshengro]

MisterBaxter​

" although it might have been a different story with big twin foresails or some other more balanced rig. "

I agree..Terrible photo..But I spent most daylight hours running down the Trade Winds under this big lightweight cruising chute. Gaff M'sail furled on the boom. The Hydrovane loved it and held a better course than I could steer by hand.

 

[MisterBaxter]

MisterBaxter​

" although it might have been a different story with big twin foresails or some other more balanced rig. "

I agree..Terrible photo..But I spent most daylight hours running down the Trade Winds under this big lightweight cruising chute. Gaff M'sail furled on the boom. The Hydrovane loved it and held a better course than I could steer by hand.

Perfect!

 

[dunedin]

……
Both windvanes and autohelms only function well in about 85% of conditions; with a wind vane that difficult 15% is when the apparent wind drops below 8-10 knots whereas with autohelms they struggle when the wind (and associated seas) get above 25-30 knots - those are the conditions when your wind vane will be operating at its best! Now I've always found that hand-helming (or better still, connecting the autohelm; we had both) in 6-8 knots of wind and flat seas is not too onerous... ……

That was probably the case with autopilots from 20 years ago (many of which will still be installed on boats) - and probably most tiller pilots.
BUT a decent modern autopilot with below deck ram and gyro compass will be massively better than any windvane in all conditions under sail (as well as under motor when a vane is useless). The better ones are now better than even experienced human helms, hence why many racing rules banned autopilot use except for single or two handed boats. And using wind vanes at the top of the mast, they don’t suffer the issues of vanes losing wind speed in large wave troughs. (And that is before adding the really high tech stuff that top racing systems now have.)
Combined with modern twin rudder designs, autopilots are regularly used in strong winds on cruising boats, and at extreme speeds 7x24 in short handed racing boats.
Even just under a decade ago on the ARC I did the percentage of autopilot failures was lower than the percentage of wind vane failures (and of course 100% of the boats with vanes also had autopilots - which they then reverted to). But clearly carrying spares for cross ocean voyages is good (an entire duplicate system may be cheaper than adding a vane system).
So to my mind, for boats above about 10m a wind vane was a great technology for last century, but like a sextant or RDF now made redundant by more modern systems (not just the autopilots themselves, but solar and hydro generation systems).
</controversial>

 

[BobnLesley]

MisterBaxter​

" although it might have been a different story with big twin foresails or some other more balanced rig. "

That was our rig of choice: Solent/Slutter rigged with jib and a very big/lightweight genoa each of which was fitted with twin sheets; in light weather we used twin poles when applicable, but when it was livelier we poled the genoa out using the boom on a preventer. That kept the centre of effort well forward and meant that we could easily adjust sail area without ever having to leave the cockpit.

 

[newtothis]

That was probably the case with autopilots from 20 years ago (many of which will still be installed on boats) - and probably most tiller pilots.
BUT a decent modern autopilot with below deck ram and gyro compass will be massively better than any windvane in all conditions under sail (as well as under motor when a vane is useless). The better ones are now better than even experienced human helms, hence why many racing rules banned autopilot use except for single or two handed boats. And using wind vanes at the top of the mast, they don’t suffer the issues of vanes losing wind speed in large wave troughs. (And that is before adding the really high tech stuff that top racing systems now have.)
Combined with modern twin rudder designs, autopilots are regularly used in strong winds on cruising boats, and at extreme speeds 7x24 in short handed racing boats.
Even just under a decade ago on the ARC I did the percentage of autopilot failures was lower than the percentage of wind vane failures (and of course 100% of the boats with vanes also had autopilots - which they then reverted to). But clearly carrying spares for cross ocean voyages is good (an entire duplicate system may be cheaper than adding a vane system).
So to my mind, for boats above about 10m a wind vane was a great technology for last century, but like a sextant or RDF now made redundant by more modern systems (not just the autopilots themselves, but solar and hydro generation systems).
</controversial>

Windvanes are pretty much as pointless as sails, aren't they. I mean, talk about outdated technology. I don't know why people hanker (or even hank on) for this pre-21st century motive power when reliable engines have been around for years, and it's easy enough these days to find enough fuel for them.

 

[lustyd]

and it's easy enough these days to find enough fuel for them

I know you’re joking but fuel can’t be found mid ocean but electricity can. One of the benefits of electric propulsion is unlimited range for cruising if you have time.

 

[Aardee]

There's some great food for thought here for those of us planning the great escape, but some of you lot could have an argument in an empty room. Not every post is a personal challenge!

 

[newtothis]

There's some great food for thought here for those of us planning the great escape, but some of you lot could have an argument in an empty room. Not every post is a personal challenge!

Oh you think so, do you... well let me explain why you're wrong.

 

[Wansworth]

I wish I could sail around the world but im tied

There's some great food for thought here for those of us planning the great escape, but some of you lot could have an argument in an empty room. Not every post is a personal challenge!

Lucky they are not going on an Atlantic crossing together!

 

[john_morris_uk]

MisterBaxter​

" although it might have been a different story with big twin foresails or some other more balanced rig. "

I agree..Terrible photo..But I spent most daylight hours running down the Trade Winds under this big lightweight cruising chute. Gaff M'sail furled on the boom. The Hydrovane loved it and held a better course than I could steer by hand.

We spent the entire crossing on twin poled out genoas. No shenanigans of putting chutes up and taking them down. The sail plan stayed the same day or night with the single watch keeper easily reducing sail if necessary by rolling some Genoa away. The wind vane loved it.

 

[veshengro]

Poled out Genoas ! No such luxury on my Gaff Cutter, just a hanked on jib and fore stays'l. It doesn't show in my photo but if the Cruising Chute was playing up I used to pole it out with a length of Aluminium Television aerial that I bought in Spain. I put fittings on it and it did the job well if in the unlikely case the wind died down.

 

[mjcoon]

Poled out Genoas ! No such luxury on my Gaff Cutter, just a hanked on jib and fore stays'l. It doesn't show in my photo but if the Cruising Chute was playing up I used to pole it out with a length of Aluminium Television aerial that I bought in Spain. I put fittings on it and it did the job well if in the unlikely case the wind died down.

A signal success!

 

[veshengro]

I got some very funny looks in Las Palmas from the posh yotties when I was experimenting with my poling out idea...