11 Self-Steering Vane Gear Installation and Usage Tips
Reading Time: 7 minutes
Self steering windvanes have a reputation of being hard to use. Reading these tips can fix that and make us love our windvane.
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Windvane Or Autopilot?
Reading Time: 4 minutes
These days every cruiser seems to fit an autopilot, but what’s the case for a vane gear? Or maybe both.
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Q&A: Windvane Or Autopilot?
Reading Time: 2 minutesDo you prefer a windvane or an autopilot for longer passages?
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The True Price of Autopilots & Vane Gears
Reading Time: 8 minutes
At first glance, autopilots and vane gears cost about the same, but the reality is more complicated, and important to get right.
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Autopilot Buyer’s Guide
Reading Time: 14 minutes
How smart and expensive an autopilot do we need for offshore shorthanded cruising? Lots of options. Here’s how to make sure we don’t select the wrong one and that we get what we paid for.
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How To Tune an Autopilot to Steer Better—Part 1
Reading Time: 12 minutes
We can make a huge difference to comfort, speed, and electrical use by manually adjusting our autopilots.
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How To Tune An Autopilot To Steer Better—Part 2
Reading Time: 10 minutes
How to set gain, counter-rudder, and trim to make an offshore passage faster and more comfortable, and save battery, too.
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Nine Autopilot Usage Tips and Hacks
Reading Time: 12 minutes
So far in this series we have got deep into the technical weeds of how autopilots work, and how to make them work better. Now let’s look at some simple tips, several of which will help with vane gears too.
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Gear Test—Autopilot
Reading Time: 3 minutes
A reliable autopilot comes right after radar as the most important piece of electronic gear We report on how our autopilot handled our 10,000-mile voyage.
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Q&A: Which Autopilot Drive?
Reading Time: 2 minutesSome thoughts on autopilot drive types and reliability.
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Autopilot Installation Problems and Lessons Learned
Reading Time: 2 minutesLessons learned from a poorly installed autopilot, and how we fixed it.
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