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
After a frustrating search for windvane plans, the one you published is by far the most promising .
would you be so kind and share a more detailed version so that the chances of a funcional windvane can beat the plywood test dummy abandoned a the botom of the garage.
thank you, muito obrigado
I’d be happy to but could you tell me what sort of sailboat you have?
sure, it is a offshore halcion 27,from 1974.
thank you
Great boat.
Here’s the sort of self-steering that makes the most sense for your boat which uses a vane to trim tab on your boats rudder. two come to mind…
The Trismus style would be my first choice. http://les.trismus.free.fr/pilote.html
This one is also dead simple https://kevinboothbysailing.com/build-your-own-self-steering-windvane/
Either would get you wherever you want to go.
thank so much for your help.
runing the risk of being a pain, i have in mind an autonomous unit, that would also help in a ruder loss situation, reason why your first published design is the most apealing to me.
once again thank you so much for your help an pacience.
In that case, what you want would be an AutoHelm clone and there’s a pretty good web page on building one
http://www.girlinagale.com/2010/11/cvane-self-made-wind-vane-steering.html
The one mistake the builder made was her auxiliary rudder should have been thicker ( at least 2 1/2″)
The main advantage of an autohelm clone is the vane to trim tab is cable and much less prone to failure.