We consider a self-steering wind-vane system as
essential on a small cruising sailboat: you are usually
short-handed and electric energy is also a limited
ressource.
During our previous cruises with VIA (a 35ft sloop with
centerboard) we used a lot our "Windpilot" Pacific. Since the
Nor'Sea has an outboard rudder, I first
contemplated to design a simple trim-tab system with a vertical vane. After realizing
that this "simple" project would already take
weeks and large number of trial and adjustments,
we decided to follow the same "safe" path than so
many other Nor'Sea took: buy a Monitor wind-vane...
The installation of the Monitor was pretty
straight-forward, assuming that you follow carefully
the procedures and allocate enough time to achieve a
proper job. The most difficult part was probably to
drill all the necessary holes in the high quality
stainless tubes (at this time we did not have a good
drill, so we learn the lesson and bought one since).
Of course, you have to be careful to avoid loosing any
small piece in the water. Deploying a tarp like you can
see on this picture can help to avoid an
embarrassing "plouf". For the record, I did not
loose any small part, but one of the main tube in
the water! It happened when removing the wind-vane
after a first fitting: I forgot that the tubes
were not bolted yet... Well, I recovered my big
mistake by diving in the muddy waters of the
marina (I could not see anything, and only found
the tube by touch with my hand).
The installation of the lines requires also some
careful thinking and always need to be adjusted to the
specifics of your own boat. Beside that, the Monitor
performed really well from our first trial. It steers
really well, even downwind (much better than our
Windpilot at this). But the stability of the Nor'Sea
also probably help.
Some pictures of our
installation can be seen in the photo
gallery.