A needful read, not the health checkup I wanted to hear, and the word for the day is Enshittification…
Every once in a while I find myself amazed at both the silly expensive asking price of wind vane self-steering gears and the idiots who buy them. I expect it has a lot to do with the “there’s one born every minute” situation.
So, here’s a simple vane gear from the much missed Loisirs Nautique that works great, costs little, and can be easily constructed by even the most tyro-adjacent amongst us.
What’s not to like? It’s simple to build, works as well or better than a hydrovane, and won’t cost much more than $125 bucks. Better yet, it shouldn’t take more time than three or four afternoons of your labor to build.,
Personally, this is just the sort of simple vane gear I’d recommend building because it’s as non-fiddly as you can get. That said, there are a bunch of other gear designs that require more thought process and travail of a fiddly nature but still well within the abilities of anyone who’s mastered tying their shoelaces.
So, the question to ask yourself is…
Why would I spend $6K instead of $125 and ten hours of sweat equity?
Why indeed.
Not seen that vane carrier set up before, but the aux-rudder and tab is pretty standard. I still like the Navik for compactness, if you need the power of a servo-pendulum.
I like it. Good post