Steering technique

sighmoon

sighmoon

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We tried a few different ways of steering the boat:

a) standing manfully behind the wheel like you see the pros doing on youtube.
b) sitting on the coaming and steering one handed
c) locking off the steering and letting the boat steer herself
no d) - we haven't got an autopilot.

Disappointingly for all our egos, c) was consistently the fastest, and a) the slowest - I suppose we end up wagging the wheel a little as we keep ourselves upright.

Are we just rubbish at steering or has anyone else tried with similar results? Where does an autopilot figure on the list?
 
when manually steering the tendency is to waggle the wheel too much. Successful helmsmanship is about anticipation rather than reaction and minimising rudder movement (drag!!)
 
A good autopilot will always outsteer a human, their concentration is constant and endless, and should also steer the most economical course
 
If the boat's layout allows it, I often sit alongside the wheel and steer with one hand, particularly upwind.
Are we talking about steering up a beat or picking our way through waves?
There is a lot more to helming that steering the straightest line!
 
maxi77 said:
A good autopilot will always outsteer a human, their concentration is constant and endless, and should also steer the most economical course
Click to expand...

They are very singleminded, and don't get distracted, but they don't know about windshifts and don't look ahead.
 
lw395 said:
They are very singleminded, and don't get distracted, but they don't know about windshifts and don't look ahead.
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You need a Windpilot for the first one. In addition they are superb at coping with waves on a reach, constantly correcting as the boat yaws to beam seas. On our many trips up and down the Dutch coast we tried to outperform the Windpilot's track on the plotter but we never did.

The looking ahead is a difficult one. We found it surprisingly difficult to remember that there was no human hand on the tiller, having to remind ourselves to look out for obstructions.
 
It took me a year to decide to lock down the wheel and realise 'doh' that this boat sails itself very well.

My ego insists that manually steering can sail fractionally closer winded. Probably.

It is funny watching those new-to-the-boat twitch and wobble the wheel ( it has quite a cut away keel for a long keeler) then as I suggest they just 'iron out the big wobbles only' they graduate quickly to occasional minimalist movements, anticipating as Jimi suggests, in fact before the weight comes onto the rudder, and off agin.

Selfsteering blade knocks 0.2kn off boatspeed. People forget that
 
sighmoon said:
.... Are we just rubbish at steering or has anyone else tried with similar results? Where does an autopilot figure on the list?
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You are rubbish at steering I am sorry to say. I have sailed with helmsman who have taken over the steering and speed instantly climbs a few 10ths of a kt. On a Contessa 34 which has a long tiller a good helmsman I know used very small jerking motions around 20 mm either side of the balance point. He was the fastest helmsman by far. It looked very un-comfortable but he kept this up for hours.
 
maxi77 said:
A good autopilot will always outsteer a human, their concentration is constant and endless, and should also steer the most economical course
Click to expand...

If true then a ST2000+ is a crap autopilot! Whether in wind, waypoint, or heading mode I reckon it is about 0.5kt slower than me but then it doesn't trim the sheets or sail as close to the wind.
 
awol said:
If true then a ST2000+ is a crap autopilot! Whether in wind, waypoint, or heading mode I reckon it is about 0.5kt slower than me but then it doesn't trim the sheets or sail as close to the wind.
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My ST5000 wanders a little so upwind it regularly allows the jib to lift. Sheeting tighter means it is over-sheeted a lot of the time. I've fiddled endlessly with the settings but can't get it to steer as steady a course as I can by hand.

On a broad reach in near surfing conditions, each wave causes a luff, preventing surfing as it struggles to straighten up. A decent helmsman can anticipate and correct for it, ending up going quite a lot faster.
 
IMHO that's where dinghy experience comes in

Learn to sail in a dinghy and you very quickly realise that tiller centred doesn't mean boat goes straight due to weather helm, sail trim, amount of heel etc. you also become quick at reacting as does the boat meaning that after a bit you settle into a place of balance where you're going in the right direction with no further major tiller movements.

Those that learn in a wheel steered yacht seem to have more of a problem. Maybe due to the fact that it's less reactive, and the wheel creates an impression of being like a road vehicle I think you tend to get a pattern of - realise off course, apply wheel to bring back on course, centre the wheel, drift off course, realise off course etc. you don't seem to get to the same point of balance as easily as you do with a tiller.
 
When we built our 22' boat in 1978, funds and experience were short so my father made a titanium quadrant under the tiller, with a row of holes and a pin to engage the steering; it worked surprisingly well, and the boat went like a rocket with the non-waggling helm !

I've known even experienced yachtmasters who drove me to distraction sawing the tiller about as some sort of nervous reaction or failure to 'get the feel'.

Obviously one had to keep an eye on that quadrant and pin setup, not the sort of thing to leave on watch for any length of time and go below to cook, navigate etc.

About 20 years ago I met an electronics boffin at my club who reckoned he was going to make his fortune out of a gyro sensing predictive autopilot which could apply the steering as waves came along, say in a quartering sea.

Funnily enough I've not seen anything of him or his invention since :rolleyes:
 
awol said:
If true then a ST2000+ is a crap autopilot! Whether in wind, waypoint, or heading mode I reckon it is about 0.5kt slower than me but then it doesn't trim the sheets or sail as close to the wind.
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In my books a good pilot needs to spot heading changes fast which tends to need a rate gyro, though a good steady heading source will work, and an adaptive control system that automatically adjusts the pilots performance to suit the conditions. That does not mean the ST2000 is **** though it may not quite match up to my ideals.
 
jac said:
Those that learn in a wheel steered yacht seem to have more of a problem. Maybe due to the fact that it's less reactive, and the wheel creates an impression of being like a road vehicle I think you tend to get a pattern of - realise off course, apply wheel to bring back on course, centre the wheel, drift off course, realise off course etc. you don't seem to get to the same point of balance as easily as you do with a tiller.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. The rudder always operates as a brake and the aim is always to use the least possible. This means that the sails must be balanced so that the boat "wants" to sail where the helmsman does. It is relatively easy in most conditions to sail a steady course without moving the helm at all but just varying the pressure.

The aim of the helmsman shouldn't be to "steer" the boat but to re-balance the helm to allow the boat to go in the desired direction. Historically, large sailing ships were always steered by sail adjustment and I believe that in some instances the rudder was only capable of 15 degrees of course change.
 
It would require a seriously large yacht to make me give up the feel and feedback of a tiller for the mechanical advantage of a wheel; the requirement of a 'rudder angle indicator' says a lot about wheel steering on yachts, except for posing purposes ! :rolleyes:
 
Seajet said:
It would require a seriously large yacht to make me give up the feel and feedback of a tiller for the mechanical advantage of a wheel; the requirement of a 'rudder angle indicator' says a lot about wheel steering on yachts, except for posing purposes ! :rolleyes:
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Is'nt a tiller just a large and rudimentary rudder angle indicator?
 
Seajet said:
It would require a seriously large yacht to make me give up the feel and feedback of a tiller for the mechanical advantage of a wheel; the requirement of a 'rudder angle indicator' says a lot about wheel steering on yachts, except for posing purposes ! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

When you've got a wheel (like mine) which is only about 1.5 turns from hard-over port to hard-over starboard, there's not much mechanical advantage and a heck of a lot of feel. But the boat is not seriously large - approximately 1.5 A22s.
 
Seajet said:
It would require a seriously large yacht to make me give up the feel and feedback of a tiller for the mechanical advantage of a wheel; the requirement of a 'rudder angle indicator' says a lot about wheel steering on yachts, except for posing purposes ! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Tillers are for people who like sailing their boat, wheels are for those who like space in the cockpit. I'm torn between the two but ultimately think I'd go with a wheel for the space advantage. It's always nicer entertaining when you don't kneecap your guests with a big stick :)
 
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