Tiller Auto pilots

Thanks for the heads up on http://www.octopusdrives.com/
Not seen them before.
Looked good until I saw the hard over time of 12-15 seconds which is a bit excessive and the £1000 price
Plus I'd still need the gyro/electronic brains to run it.

TQA - yup I've read this and similar tails of woe and there's no doubt in my mind that when its an ocean crossing a windvane like the Windpilot is the way to go.
However for short trips of 150 miles down to a day sail, having a reliable electric crew member can be really helpful.

I concede that the Evo-100 is the most obvious choice but I personally have issues with the current crop of Raymarine equipment, not the least that the Evolution equip is nmea2000 or Seatalk only.
It's not fair to say that they are more unreliable than other makes as we see a lot more Raymarine gear than any other make but that said in the last year we've had a number of issues with Raymarine gear.

I dropped the guy behind the Tiller wand an email and interestingly his boat is an Olson 34, which is very similar to mine.
Not nailed the torque figure issue yet however although he obviously believes its enough for his boat and a Santana 35, both of which have raced successfully from the West coast to Hawaii and back.

Ignoring the actual drive the bit I'm really interested in is the Gyro Controller which at a little over £400 looks very good value.
Ill try and get some more info re the tiller drive.

I wonder if I can get the ST2000 to work with his Gyro controller, hmmm
 
Last edited:
Javelin,
I was in the same position as you, had a wind pilot which is good for offshore but a faff for local sailing, also had a ST2000+ but it was slowly destroying itself because it's nor really rated for extended use on my 32ft 4.5T boat. I needed something decent for single-handed/two handed racing inshore and offshore.

The result was the install of an Evolution Tiller pilot kit from Raymarine. It did take quite a bit of setting up, and I had a number of long and frustrating calls with their support guys (getting conflicting advice at times) until I took the whole lot back and they discovered that the course computer was faulty. Now it's back in the boat and I have done a degree of tuning it works very well indeed. The STng protocol is a bit of a pain but I have managed to integrate it using a Actisense STng/NMEA converter.

So the answer, if you don't want to spend thousands, is probably an Evolution pilot.

I really want to get a remote for it but the Raymarine remotes are all ST so I would need yet another converter box to get it to work with the STng Evolution pilot. I live in hope that the remotes will catch up soon and run over STng natively.
 
Georgio said:
.......The result was the install of an Evolution Tiller pilot kit from Raymarine. It did take quite a bit of setting up, and I had a number of long and frustrating calls with their support guys (getting conflicting advice at times) until I took the whole lot back and they discovered that the course computer was faulty. Now it's back in the boat and I have done a degree of tuning it works very well indeed.......
Click to expand...

Hello Georgio, could I invite you to look at the post "Is my tiller pilot hyperactive" and see what you think about the video?
The Evolution is a development of the SPX, which I have,

I may be having similar problems to yourself.
 
Going back to the Pelagic Autopilot -
I asked about the disparity between the quoted torque figures.
I am in the process of measuring the two against each other. There is something odd about RM's claim. I can stall both units on my tiller with about the same force. I think the RM force is what it will hold without slipping, which is a little different than what it will pull and still move. But that is a theory until I get the measurement done. If you push an RM it will slip. This happens a lot on my boat in windy reachy conditions. So then the AP has to fix the yaw. It shuts off, a gust hits again, it slips again, and on and on. The unit I have does not slip like this so the motor runs a bit less. It will slip, but at much higher force
Click to expand...

He also say's
The experience of many of us on the west coast who sail to Hawaii is one is lucky to get 2000 miles from the RM tiller wand / X5 / EVO-100. I created the electronics out of fear of failure of my on board RM X5 pilot, in 2012. I also carried along two ST2000's as back ups.
Click to expand...

I'm getting more tempted.
 
Javelin said:
So given the NKE Gyropilot is 5K + (plus I don't see an external cockpit tiller solution for a 34' yacht)
it appears the only other viable electronic solution is the Raymarine Evolution tiller pilot which will still cost me 1k.
Plus the raymarine is nmea 2000 so I'd need to convert it to 0183 so it can talk to my other gear.

I actually have access to a Windpilot PacificPlus http://windpilot.com/n/wind/en/prod/paci/
However I'm not keen on having another rudder permanently sticking out the back.
Would be fine crossing an ocean or from here to the med but cruising the East coast interspersed with jumps accross to Belgium/Holland, would make it a bit OTT.

From the electrical side it looks like there's a bit of a gap in the market.

Oh and the link to the Tillerwand is http://pelagicautopilot.com/tiller-wand-testing-underway/
Click to expand...

I think that there is a misconception that wind vanes involve lots of "faffing"
Once installed- easier than installing an av-100- the time to engage is minimal. I use mine a lot on the east coast even for short legs &prefer it to my new av100 which as i have said gives dissappointing results upwind my aeries is far better than my raymarine. Uses no power, does not break down does not complain ( like. Some crew)
But to each his own
Trips to belgium- definately use it if wind enough for it & if not then engage the autopilot & motor.
 
Testing continues - here's the latest update,
I took the tiller wand to near motor stall, not quite. The lifted weight went up to 100kg, 220lbs. You can see the data graphed here: 2nd pass tiller drive load test .

After that test I inserted the ST2000 RM. I have not yet completed the testing.
A quick summary, which I will describe in a few days with graphs.
The RM wand was able to lift 103 lbs, slowly.
When you shut the power off it would not hold the payload.
It would slip, or rather spin the motor.
I have seen this on my boat. In windy, rough conditions it will set a course, gust hits, tiller arm slips, AP turns on, recovers rudder, then off and another slip.....and on and on.
I will measure the load threshold where this occurs. You can simulate this on the bench, just press the push rod with about 50 lbs of force and it will slide back.
This means that it would use a lot of power in rough conditions.

More to come if anyone is interested.
 
I've got the ST2000 on my F27 trimaran, but I've only limited experience with it although it's looking good so far. I'd heard all the horror stories about water getting into them so I've taped the seam and added a clear panel (actually a piece of chart pocket) over all the buttons to try and give it a chance, and extended the cable so that the plug is inside the cabin.

It got a real test last Sunday coming back across the Celtic Sea with a 20- 25 knot wind and a 2-3m sea on the quarter. I was trying to keep boat speed down into single figures so as not to arrive at Scilly in the dark and as a result the pilot was going from lock to lock all night as she yawed on the waves. I only had to take over in the morning when I turned to run along the bottom of the Islands and I didn't trust it whilst surfing.

I've currently got the damping on 7 out of 9 as I found that worked best when going to windward (trimarans tend to sway a bit as they rise over waves rather than cut through them) but did wonder if by reducing it she may have been a bit more stable with the wind on the quarter. Anyone any views on that?
 
I'd have thought a lot of damping sounds about right then.

I know people are mainly talking of bigger boats than the one I have now, but surely there's an element of sail trim required here ?

Even on my 22 I don't expect the thing to handle full racing geronimo sail, but for normal cruising and giving me a rest - the whole point - just a tiny bit of mainsail depowering helps a lot.

With my Anderson 22 I started with a Mini Seacourse, which was spiffing after years without anything, but pretty feeble, nasty input device ( basically twiddle the knob on top until it agreed on roughly the course I was hoping for ) and had a sense of humour; at the time there were no solar panels so when the battery voltage dropped the thing died with a theatrical ' urgh ' and shoved the helm hard over.

Next was an Autohelm 1000 pre-ST, which worked very well for me as long as I didn't push it too hard; when I discovered there are virtually no spares for that model I went to an ST2000.

The first one lasted 30 seconds.

The replacement seems fine, and a step above the 1000 in both power and software; I've deliberately tried it in quartering seas which I knew beyond the 1000, and the 2000ST was completely happy.

My boat has some feel and feedback on the helm, is not a neutral lifeless tiller job.

On my IOR based Carter 30, which was a lot worse handling in a quartering sea, I had an early 2000 with separate electronics, and that was OK within reason.

I can't help thinking if one needs more power than a 2000ST can give, one needs to look at trim; after all with a wind vane one trims the sails sympathetically.
 
+1 Octopus drive. Numerous ways to avoid bends in the cable so its almost frictionless de-clutched.You could arrange a sort of bumpkin tiller attachment facing aft, which gets all out of the way.mine is driven by the original 4000+ Raymarine Autopilot head unit.These had it all in one box.(rudder feedback unit on the octopus drive is very good.
Javelin,
you do not need all the travel, mine only needs 30 degrees in total, ie 15 deg either side, so the hardover time is mostly irrelevant.You've lost the plot somewhat if the boat will not trim more efficiently?
 
Last edited:
paulclan said:
+1 Octopus drive.
Javelin,
you do not need all the travel, mine only needs 30 degrees in total, ie 15 deg either side, so the hardover time is mostly irrelevant.You've lost the plot somewhat if the boat will not trim more efficiently?
Click to expand...

That seems to be our experience too - with reasonable settings input it will happily steer Zest when surfing at 12-13 knots, although we tend to hand steer if faster than that when racing.
 
6' elliptical lead keel, 4 foot blade semi balanced rudder on a IOR 1980's hull means upwind and on a close reach the helm is neutral.
The power from an electric toothbrush would be enough.

Off the wind in 20knts and a lumpy sea is a very different story.
Rig balance is not the issue, foil lift and especially hull form have a far bigger impact on helming.

The point on the tests were to look at another tiller arm which is a lot cheaper than the ST2000
Couple that to kit that measures heel. pitch, yaw etc and can therefore semi predict, all for around 50% of the £ of the RM Evo. to my mind is worth a look.
 
I'm a little confused by your last post. In the OP you said you hadn't been entirely happy with the performance of the ST2000 in quartering seas, and asked if anyone had experience with a couple of other makes. Are you looking for something that is cheaper or performs better than the ST? It's just I looked up the Jefa one you asked about and that is easily well over £1000, and for that you can buy two, if not three ST2000s.....

It seems to me that unless you go super expensive with lots of other sensors any form of auto steering is always going to struggle in a quartering sea because they react to the change in direction rather than anticipate it, and because waves move the stern of the boat around so quickly they are always going to be playing catch up. I was actually very impressed with how well the ST2000 coped last week, my only concerns were around if the work it was doing was going to cause it to break down......
 
I'm looking for something better than the ST2000.
Obviously the cheaper the better.
The Tiller arms likr the ST1000/2000 and the Simrad tp's are very reactionary in response.
Due to this they work quite hard always trying to catch up.
Coupled with a pitch yaw direction sensor its argued that this will reduce the reaction time.
This is where the Evo, Jefa systems come in.

However I was also following up claims that the American Tiller wand would do what the expensive AP's would do for roughly the same cost of a cheaper ST2000.
 
I can't understand the attitude that as many larger boats have wheel steering, tiller pilots are obsolete. Like many wheel-steered boats, mine has a ram operating the rudder via a short tiller. As I have found a wheel pilot to be totally useless on my boat, I was thinking on getting a tiller pilot and connecting it to this tiller while making provision for disconnecting the wheel system. Ideally a pilot with remote control would be used.
 
Wight Dawn said:
I can't understand the attitude that as many larger boats have wheel steering, tiller pilots are obsolete. Like many wheel-steered boats, mine has a ram operating the rudder via a short tiller. As I have found a wheel pilot to be totally useless on my boat, I was thinking on getting a tiller pilot and connecting it to this tiller while making provision for disconnecting the wheel system. Ideally a pilot with remote control would be used.
Click to expand...

Bit confused here. There are 3 different types of autopilot for wheel steered boats. The first has a belt drive attached to the wheel - commonly known as a Wheelpilot. The second, and most common has a ram, either electric or hydraulic which operates the rudder either through a steering arm on the stock or attached to the quadrant. Third, and less common is an electric motor that drives the chain in the steering pedestal. These are commonly referred to as below decks pilots. They all use essentially the same course computers and remote control heads. The same type of electronics can also be used for larger tiller steered boats with a ram attached to the tiller, usually above decks. Smaller tiller steered boats use an all in one control head and ram.

It is unclear from your description which type you have that you are unhappy with, and what you think will replace it.

For tiller
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top