I’m posting this in a separate thread so it doesn’t divert from Dan’s.
When I sea-trialed my boat in early 2003 I asked to see the Autohelm ST4000 autopilot in action. We were cruising on diesel, not sail. The broker, who was pretty knowledgeable about the boat, turned it on and pushed a button to have it hold its course. It did fine for a few minutes and then spun us in a full 360 about as fast as the boat could do one. We tried again with a similar result, though he caught it before it went more than 20 to 30 degrees of the circle and threw out the clutch lever.
I figured I’d have to replace it, but I’ve needed one so rarely that I haven’t bothered. I’ve had some serious health issues and my wife doesn’t like the thought of me going out alone, so I always have someone to either steer or raise/lower the sail. And I’ve only day-sailed, so far.
But I’m tempted to violate the no-solo strictures and now all of this talk about adjusting settings and such has me wondering if my ancient autopilot just needs some care and tweaks. Has anyone experienced this problem and fixed it?
Thanks,
Correct me if I am wrong, The Autohelm had the small, black flux compass (if that was what it was called then)?
I think that is what I had on my Pearson 30. I had the same issue. It might be 2 hours into crossing lake Ontario and then it would make a hard left turn for no reason, I thought. After a year of this I figured it out.
My Flux compass was in the starboard cockpit cubby. Recorded books on a phone were popular. My wife was listening to a book with her wired headphones. I noticed that she turned her head to look out at the lake and the boat went wonky. The little magnets in the headphone speakers were playing with the compass. After that she sat on the port side. It conked out a few years later and we went with a Raymarine (7000?). Check to see if there is something near the compass that is interfering with the system.
I have the Raymarine Evo Wheelpilot on my N30. It works as long as I am moving at 3 knots or more. Slower than that it swims back and forth. Even at higher speeds with more than 1 ft waves it strays a bit and takes too long to recover. Then it overcorrects and goes through the target heading. If I had the money, I would go with the hydraulic, below deck, system. The computer reacts in time, but that tiny wheel mounted motor does not act on the input fast enough.
I must confess that I have been unable to even find the flux compass. About the only place I haven’t looked is beneath the floorboards at the bottom of the companionway ladder because they are screwed down. Is it likely to be under there? Maybe I need to break out my screwdriver. But if it’s down there I have no idea what could interfere with it from the cockpit.
If I do get serious about it I would probably replace it with a newer Raymarine one. This subject piqued my curiosity and it looks like the EV-200 or EV-400 with the linear drive unit would be my choice. The EV-200 / Type 1 drive says it’s good up to a 24,000 pound boat, but I’m skeptical about that. It’s the rudder and sail that this thing is really steering and ours tend to be pretty big for the size of our boats. The EV-400 can work on up to a 33,000 pound boat, but it comes at something like a $2000 premium, which I would not be able to justify.
I know I’ve read about someone installing one of these in their boat. I’m curious if it used the Type 1 or 2 linear drive and how well it works.
The Autohelm 4000 has a built in compass in the control head. That’s why you can’t find it, Brian. In my experience when delivering boats, the older 3000 was more stable and it was not unusual for 4000 units to suddenly veer off.
Joe Valinoti
S/V iL Gatto NS30U #221
Sea Harbour YC
Oriental, NC USA
I went searching online and downloaded an installation manual. It shows an optimum area for installing the compass which does seem to be in the one area I haven’t looked. Because I haven’t wanted to unscrew the decking just to look for it.
But if it is common for them to suddenly veer off, the issue of whether and where there is a compass seems irrelevant. It was unnerving when it happened and could cause problems if I was relying on it. San Diego bay is often too crowded to just suddenly go for a pirouette without even looking around first.
I had the ST4000 wheel pilot and found it also unreliable and often erratic. It had a Fluxgate Compass. I installed the EV-200 Sail Pilot and have trusted it without hesitation, in all points of sail. Downwind especially, the ST4000 was very flaky. The EV-200 works flawlessly downwind, with rolling seas.
There’s a how-to guide I wrote on the INA website if interested for installing the EV-200.
Bob Gehrman
NS30U #396 “Quickbeam”
Baltimore, Maryland
Thanks, Bob. Yeah! That was your write-up that I read a long time ago. Or what seems like a long time ago, given what the last year or so has been like. And this is a very good recommendation with you having used it for a while now.
It’s an ST-4000. But that’s a model name which may have changed over the years as features were added. Autohelm did invent Seatalk, perhaps as one of those upgrades.
In any case, it doesn’t sound reliable enough to bother with.
Joe’s talking about ST-60 display instruments, while Brian’s talking about St-4000 autopilots.
My experiences with the ST-4000 on two different boats matches Joe’s about tendencies to veer off for no good reason.
My experiences with Raymarine customer support have left me committed to buying from any other company but them in the future.
It used to be that you could get steer to wind by pressing two buttons on the autopilot controller simultaneously. After going to a lot of trouble to upgrade a boat so that I had the necessary data for steering to wind, I spent literally 10 weeks going around with Raymarine customer support trying to figure out why I couldn’t get it to work. The answer turned out to be that, yes, it used to be a feature and, yes, the manual still says that it’s a feature – but we just don’t support that feature anymore.
I’m glad that Bob’s experiences with a different Raymarine product are better, but I ain’t goin’ back to them for anything – ever.
My Raymarine Autopilot is ST4000+ and it looks a little different on the backside. It is married to a wired Autohelm remote because it is mounted on the aft cabin wall. I experienced the loop de loop twice. Once on the sea (river) trial just above Essex Ct. and again when I had my daughters entire crew (7 in all ) aboard going downwind on the Long Island sound. That one caused an accidental jibe that caused the main sheet to tangle then around a MOB frame on the stern rail. Needless to say it was not a good way to assemble a crew. I don’t know what is different with the + unit but here a picture of the backside of mine.
Whoa! Seven people on board even without the pirouette sounds like a very busy day.
I’m not sure what the + version has - probably just a modernized look - but it has apparently retained that random looping feature. I think it really does help reinforce my decision not to use the thing.
My control head is also mounted on the aft cabin bulkhead. There’s a little door on the inside of that bulkhead that gives access to the rear of the instruments. I’ve been building that out as my little central electronics hub. I don’t have a remote for it and I was going to try and network it to the Axiom+ display, but now I can see that it is probably a waste of time.
I’ve only had one experience with Raymarine - regarding the correct antenna to use with their AIS transceiver. They were willing and patient at the back and forth of figuring out what I had and whether it would work.
I think every large company with a multi-generational family of products is occasionally going to frustrate you with some weird incompatibility of tech and/or documentation. But I’ve found that the worst thing a company can do is try and obstruct you from talking to a human being. “The answers to all of your questions can be found on our website!” Then you go there and find three FAQs, none of which comes even remotely close. Whoever invented those phone-tree answering systems probably wears horns and has a pointy red tail…
I had a similar issue with my Autohelm 3000 which I believe is similar. In my case, I had mounted the motor drive unit in the opposite orientation than the unit was configured for. That resulted in a positive feedback situation where as soon as the control unit tried to adjust course, the wheel went in the opposite direction which quickly resulted in more heading error and the control unit drove the wheel to the max direction. I re-oriented the drive unit and tried again and it worked like a champ. From the user manual, I recall seeing some kind of setting which can be made to accommodate different drive orientations but I never needed to do that.
Hope that helps,
George Berntsen
Wave Dancer NS30U #283
Black Rock, CT
I think that’s a different issue. Mine worked fine most of the time and then just suddenly did a pirouette. I get the impression that others had the same experience. I think mounting the motor backwards would result in it always steering wrong. I’m glad you got yours working to your satisfaction.
I crossed the Atlantic, sailing downwind, with a Raymarine ST4000+ (late model, late firmware version) and it never acted up on me. Never. It was not with a Nonsuch, however. The current owner of the boat still uses the setup, he does a lot of solo sailing.
The drive I used was a heavily modified ram from an ST6000. I added an H bridge end-stage driver to the drive, so the ST4000+ was just controlling, not pushing any current. The compass was located as low inside the boat as possible, directly under the mast, which I believe was the pivot point of that boat. This was to minimize movement that could confuse the compass.
I’m installing an underdeck autopilot on my N36 using components that I had as spares on my previous boat. Therefore, it will be based on a ST4000+
The ram is an electro-hydraulic one, from Simrad and the added H-bridge current driver I designed will take care of marrying the components. The compass is placed down below on floor level, directly above the keel.
We’ll see how the setup functions on a Nonsuch, but I have high hopes that it’ll be as good as on my previous boat.
