Which Autopilot?

[SteveLyle]

In the depths of a Rochester, NY winter (and that's saying something) it's time to plan this year's big improvement.  I believe it'll be an autopilot.

There are two that seem to fit the bill - the Simrad WP30, and the Raymarine ST-4000 MkII.  

Both are self-contained wheel pilots - no exposed belts.  Both accept NMEA 0183.  Both are sized to handle bigger boats than a C34.

The Simrad is a one piece unit - compass, motor, and control head all in one piece.

The Raymarine has a separate control head, that looks like a ST-60 display, and shows bearing and other info on it's LCD display.  It has a separate compass that's got to be mounted, but a search on 'autopilot' showed a lot of possible locations for that.

I contacted my standard source for this kind of stuff - Performance Yacht Systems.  They've got the Raymarine for $800.  They say they don't carry the WP30 any longer, because they had too many returns.  Defender has the Raymarine for $677, I've seen the WP30 for $750 or so.

Any recommendations, opinions, first hand experiences, etc.?

[sail4dale]

Put in an Autohelm4000 plus a few months ago.  Went in smooth and it "seatalks" to my other Raymarine instruments.  

Installation is straight forward and tha instructions are simple.

I had the Autohelm ST2000 on my Cat30 for many years.  Loved it.

[Stu Jackson]

Steve

In addition to those two, you may want to consider the autohelm (Raymarine) 3000.  This is the one with the belt.  The reason I chose this one was it was to replace an older 3000 model that pooped out on me (it was 15 years old!).  I didn't have to rewire through the pedstal.  The advantage of the 3000 over the 4000 is that it can be disengaged by moving the arm on the motor, thus freeing up the belt and making the wheel "free."  While I haven't seen it personally, I remember someone telling me that the 4000 was always enagaged with the wheel.  The 3000 has a built in fluxgate compass, so you don't have to wire something else.  I don't use mine for interfacing with anything, so KISS works for me.  There is also a tremendous amount of discussion on both this site and catalinaowners.com about the frustrations people have had in calibrating the 4000.  That seems to be solved, but not by Raymarine, but by sailors who have posted their own solutions.  If you do get the 4000, you'll need to read those posts to get it to work.  Good luck - you'll just love having one!

Stu

[Norris Johnson]

I bought a Raymarine 4000 about 2 yrs ago. I love it, but like Stu said, I had a time tuning it and I did get my tuning #'s from this site. I also relocated my fluxgate compass from aft of the engine to the compartment forward of the nav table where my holding tank is located. That made
the biggest improvement.

Best thing I've added to this boat.

[Norris Johnson]

Don't know why my last post didn't have my boat.
Mariposa
#1408
1998

[Fulvio]

I have an Autohelm 4000.  I didn't have any problems with calibration, presumably the previous owner took care of that.  But I do have to say that I don't have much confidence in it's ability to handle really rough seas.  Every time I was in large swells and 20+ knots I had to take over manually, or at least aid with a firm hand to keep it from clack-clack-clack skipping on the lee-side turn when coming down a wave.  Not exactly reassuring when single-handing.  I also had to take it in to get the clutch fixed twice, and it looks like I'll need to do it again.

That's why I'm about to install a Monitor windvane.  No one responded to that query, am I the first of this association?  The Monitor web site says that at least 2 C34s have it installed.

Oh, and the 4000 CAN be disengaged with the clutch lever.

Fulvio Casali
Seattle WA
Soliton
#929 (1989)

[Stu Jackson]

Fulvio

Congratulations on your trip.  Glad you're still in touch.

I posted a question about wind vanes a few months ago, and also received no reply.  Could be that the 2 C34s that have them are out there cruising, and may not be in touch via email.  

All of the abovedecks autopilots are really not suitable for heavy weather, as you found out.  The reaction and hardover times don't cut it, and, of course, they simply can't anticipate quartering seas.  Even here on SF Bay in heavy weather, our autopilot can't keep up with quartering seas, and we hand steer or avoid going in those directions that would put those waves on us by tucking in behind islands.

Stu

[Norris Johnson]

I agree with Stu, mine will have a hard time if I would have trouble steering and I'm anticipating. I doubt if any of them can anticipate.

A friend of mine has a Westsail and they all have wind vanes that work great, but I've never seen one on a catalina.

[John Gardner]

Previous Owner put in a ST4000 last year, and it's been just fine in my brief experience.  My one experience of harsh weather showed it to have difficulty with the short steep seas of the Chesapeake, but just fine where the water was flatter.  The fluxgate is in with the holding tank.  The Display/Control unit is in the cockpit side at the helmsman's seat, which is not too bad except that it's too low down.  So if I use the seat cushion it hides the lower part of the instrument and could easily nudge the "Standby" button and cause the rudder to be fixed in its last position.
I'll get a round tuit one of these days.

[mike baker]

I installed a Simrad WP30 a couple years ago.  Having no previous experience with autopilots I can’t compare it to others, but I am very satisfied with the WP30.  It is interfaced with my chart plotter as well as wind instruments and both control the autopilot very well, although the wind instruments were not talking to the autopilot when we pulled out last fall.  I think it is probably a loose wire.  That would be my only complain with the unit.  They use very very small wires for interfacing, as do manufacturers of many other pieces of electronic equipment.  These wires are difficult to work with and can break easily.

Except for fishing the wires through my pedestal guard posts, installation was a breeze.  Essentially all you do is bolt it on.  I would recommend purchasing the optional remote control.  This gives a display screen and simpler operation.  To calibrate the system all I had to do was punch a couple buttons and motor in a slow circle until the autopilot beeped.  

The early models (mine included) had some problems with belt tension and belt wear which was corrected by the factory recall that I didn’t know about (gotta learn to send in those registration cards).  At the end of last boating season i sent my unit in for this repair.  Since it was 2 years old I had to pay for labor ($100 US) but not parts.  I thought they could have been nice and covered all of it but they didn’t.

Mike Baker #815 "Gray Hawk"

[PAUL T.]

STEVE, COULD YOU PLEASE GIVE ME MORE INFORMATION ON WHERE YOU CAN GET THE AUTOHELM 4000 FOR 677.00 FROM DEFENDER?  THANK YOU MUCH....... PAUL.

[SteveLyle]

I did a search at CatalinaOwners.com on 'autopilot' and found at least 3 threads that asked the same question I did.

Generally, people loved whatever they had.  There were problems with the early WP30's with the belts and the housing (interfered with the buttons) which probably explains why PYS doesn't carry it anymore.  There were negative comments on the service of both (and positive ones, too), and there were some negative comments about Raymarine products overalll.  Very consistent with the comments in this thread.

Paul - I happened to check the Defender price in a window when they were offering a special. They've since raised their price back up, but you can try haggling with them - after all they've proved they're willing to sell it at that price.  I went ahead and put my order in at $677 - over $100 less than any other price I've seen on the Raymarine, and about $50 less than the lowest price I've seen on the Simrad.  Makes a good story to the boss re: why I needed to get it now.

So there you have it, I've got a 4000+MkII on the way.  A bit more complicated to install, but it gives me another instrument display, and it turns at a bit higher rate than the Simrad (9 rpm vs 7..  I would expect the torque to be better than the MkI, but I'm not sure.

One other thing I learned, check your GPS software.  I've got a Garmin GPSMap 75.  When I set it up to output NMEA, and captured it on my PC, I didn't see the sentences that both Simrad and Raymarine say they need.  I went to the Garmin web site and found that since I got my GPS they've released two software updates for it.  One of them includes NMEA output options that enables the necessary sentences to be generated.  

This is gonna be so cool, I can't wait till spring.

Thank you everybody for your input.

[Jim Price]

I just received this email today from defender.  Cliped the part about the ST4000 MKII.  This may help on price questions
---------------------------------------
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