The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

Gear Test—Autopilot

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A reliable autopilot comes right after radar on our priority scale. A shorthanded crew that steers all the time, or even much of the time, is a tired crew, and a tired crew is a dangerous crew. Here is our report on how the Robertson AP300X autopilot—now somewhat updated and sold as the B&G NAC-3—on Morgan’s Cloud handled our 10,000-mile, eight-month Arctic voyage:

The Good

Reliable

After I fixed some initial teething problems, caused by the installing technician being too stupid and/or too lazy to use the correct sealant on the threads of the hydraulic fittings—yes, I’m bitter, the SOB nearly caused me to have no autopilot halfway to Bermuda, single handed, and all because he could not take five minutes to do it right—the autopilot was completely reliable for 25 years and some 100,000 miles. The only maintenance we performed was to replace the hydraulic oil a couple of times.

By the way, this installation was the last time we had someone else install a vital piece of electronic gear for us. My reasoning was that, at the time, I had no experience with high pressure hydraulics and so I thought I should hire a “professional”. But in fact, I would have done a better job myself because I would have read and followed the manual. As it was, I had to do the whole job again anyway.

More about that experience, and what I learned from here.

Powerful Drive

Even though we have cable steering, I’m a big believer in a hydraulic ram directly connected to the rudder shaft for the autopilot drive. Having owned both, I think that properly installed hydraulics are just more reliable, particularly in high load situations, than mechanical linkages or drives. The other advantage of directly driving the rudder shaft is that it gives you an immediate steering backup if you break a steering cable.

At the time we installed our pilot, Robertson did not make a hydraulic ram that looked beefy enough to me. They wanted us to install two smaller rams working together, but that looked like too much complication, and too much drag when hand steering, so in the end I settled on a monster K-4 ram from Hynautic (now part of Teleflex) normally used to steer really big motor vessels, driven by the largest of the Robertson hydraulic pumps.

The Not So Good

Stupid

Let’s just say that this autopilot is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. It was one of the first to have so-called intelligent software that could learn how to steer the boat. Well, not really. Over the years I have learned to tweak the parameters to make it steer fairly well in most conditions, but it still over-steers horribly and hunts far more than it should. Steering did get better when we installed an RFC 35R rate compass some years ago, but it’s still not great.

In fact our ancient analog Neco that made no pretensions to intelligence, with all its knobs and buttons, consistently steered better than the Robertson.

Poor Interface

To change something as simple as the steering gain, you have to go through a pile of poorly designed menus. This seems to be a distressing trend in electronic interface design: removal of knobs and buttons in favour of layers of menus.

Noisy

The RPU 300 hydraulic pump, while incredibly reliable, is noisy, really noisy. In fact it is so bad that one of our guests christened it the “copulating cats”. We have tried everything, including mounting it on rubber. On the bright side, Phyllis and I sleep in the salon at sea, and so can’t hear it—as we tell our guests, who sleep aft, “it’s important that the skipper and mate are well rested”.

Verdict

The pump set and cylinder combination

Highly recommended. You just can’t argue, noise or not, with 100,000 miles of trouble free operation. And this drive set up is powerful enough and fast enough to steer Morgan’s Cloud in gale force winds from aft.

The autopilot brain

Not recommended. While reliable, there are smarter options that will sail the boat better while using less electricity available today.

Comments

What autopilot do you have and how has it worked out for you? Please leave a comment.

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Brett Anderson

I have a WH P3-C on my Morgan 46, Liberty, and I am very happy with it. I have their 1/2 hp hydraulic pump plumbed directly into my hydraulic steering and it can handle heavy seas no problem. It is a bulletproof, reliable autopilot and their customer service is excellent. The owner of the company answers the phone himself and he says he will answer the phone from 7am – 11pm Seattle time every day. I talked to him when I first bought Liberty and he walked me through troubleshooting a minor power issue. The previous owners of Liberty used the WH in crossing the Atlantic and cruising the Med for several years with no problems.

Alan Teale

Hi John, As with radar, I am with you on prioritisation of an autopilot. We are currently fitting a B&G ACP2 Hercules pilot system operating on the rudder stock through the B&G-badged T3 hydraulic ram. The main thing that is exercising us at the moment is how best to deal with its high amp diet, and I am wondering about Watt & Sea’s cruising hydrogenerator. On paper it is an impressive amp producer The racing version is now quite well proven and becoming standard kit in the offshore shorthanded racing circuit. But even the cruising version is costly. However, if it does what it says it can do it would be worth the outlay. Have you, or has anyone else had experience of the W&S hydrogenerator, or have you heard anything that might be helpful in making a decision on purchase?
My apologies if this is a little tangential to your subject. My defence is that providing power to a pilot system is a serious consideration. Alan

Michael

John,

Thanks for the link to the watt and sea device. I think we will spend the money on it before a wind generator.

Michael

Alex

I find on the French forum with the Englisch Sail The Word a discussion
I conclude after reading it that it is only usefull from 5 knots.
5 knots= 1-2 Ah
8 knots= 10 Ah
10 knots = 15 Ah

James

We use a Autohelm / Raytheon 7000 series electric autopilot with ram connected directly to the rudder stock quadrant.This unit has performed faultlessly for over 20,000 miles sailing from and to the Arctic or down to Spain. The “Brain ” seems to be able to cope with ALL sea states having once been easily set up to suit our yachts peculiarities.
I would agree too that the Autopilot ranks next to the Radar, in fact even probably above as the neccessity to attend to the Helm is constant,whilst the Radar is only used in bad visibility or heavy traffic situations.
To digress AIS is also a fantastically useful tool too.

Richard

James, I second Raymarine autopilot. Mine has a gyro and steers very well in all sea conditions that I have encountered. Has been working realibly for 8+ yrs (12,000 nm). In some ways AIS is superior to radar, in other ways not so superior. Having both would be nice. I can do without Radar and AIS, but I wouldn’t want to cruise any distance without my Autopilot.

Tom Hildebrandt

Consider TMQ, an Australian brand. It is used by all the fishing fleet. The service of this company is excellent, The control head on my last TMQ unit died after 10 years. The guy who answered the phone was the technician, he took care of the sale, and made sure that I had the correct connections to adapt the new to the old unit. They recommended the AP55 as the upgrade model as the older unit was, like yours, no longer being supported. It arrived with all the needed connections, installed easily, and has worked flawlessly for the past 4 years. They even gave me a returning customer discount!

I have had no problems with the unit (or hydraulic ram mounted to the quadrant) handling any seas, in any conditions. Like all these units, it uses a bit of power, and when the ram is actuated, there is a bit of noise, but the unit does not seem to disturb the sleep of crew in the aft bunks!

The brain is adjustable, with sensitivity controls for compass and steering, so it can be set for any conditions.

I spoke to a fellow who knew the owner of the company, and he claimed his company was not making the industry standard in income from repairs, the reason being that the units never failed!

Cheers

Tom

Svein Lamark

Hi John,
The two best autopilots are probably Robertson/Simrad and Furuno.
I have had four different Robertson pilots, all of them reliable and good. Robertson had a fantastic service before they were bought by Simrad. I phoned the factory directely and got help by the workers. The diagnose was given immedately and spare parts sendt fast. By returning the old parts I got updates for free and even two pumps fore free. To day the factory is not allowed to answer such phone calls. A salesman will answer and he wants to sell a new pilot, not fix the old one.
Last year I sailed a big, modern trawler as skipper because the owner wanted some holydays. It had a new Furuno pilot. It worked well under difficult conditions: Two trawls out, lots of current, gale and bad bottom. Also many wrecks and other fishingboats were around. This is the ultimate test of a pilot and the Furuno did it. The manual is not good. I think Furuno has a good service and are reliable ( this experiece is from many years with Furuno radars).
The sensitivity of the compass is often the key to good autopilot sailing. The Robertson mini-gyro you have is better then a fluxgate, but not as good as a GPS-compass. Again I think Furuno has the best GPS-compass. An advanced gyro is better, but to costly.
I would upgrade your system with a Furuno brain and a Furuno GPS-compass. My number two choice would be a Robertson/Simrad system. The mini-gyro I would keep as a back-up system if GPS failure.

Colin

Hi Svein and John

We went for Simrad (AP 28) due to the Robertson reputation, and wish we hadn’t. Ours has not been reliable at all (software problems, control head failure, leaking ram, broken UJ mounting for the ram, and now getting spares). Service from Simrad has been very poor – not their Agents in the field, who we’ve been very pleased with, but the Company.

For what it’s worth, of the main ‘yachting’ type suppliers, Raytheon seem to be the only ones who have a reasonable rep for customer care.

If I had my time again I’d certainly look closely at the smaller firms that make commercial units.

Best wishes

Colin