Captain Ron's

Sailing and Cruising Pages

Simrad Wheel Pilot

by Capt Ron

This falls in the category of another failed product although the customer service side was ultimately agreeable.

We bought Kismet in Baltimore in August 2003 and moved her to Annapolis and the Port Annapolis Marina for haul out, engine repairs and some modifications.

One thing we needed for the long delivery trip home was an autopilot. No way we were going to hand steer for 1600 miles.

The boat did not have an autopilot installed and so we began looking for a reasonable solution. The new wheel pilots sold by Simrad (was Navico) and Raymarine (was Autohelm) seemed to be good solutions. We ended up buying a Simrad unit through Sailnet (was JSI which was Johnson Sails) ...

The installation went fine (we thought) and testing showed the AP to be functioning properly although the integral control unit ends up behind the wheel and oriented such that the buttons are sideways ... that is the left-right buttons are oriented on a fore-aft axis. It's a minor point but the controls are set-up such that it's easier to reach through the wheel to punch the buttons. This could be dangerous if the wheel moves in a way to trap your wrist ... maybe even gets you a broken arm or hand.

When we finally launched further testing confirmed that the unit was functional. On the second day out of Annapolis on our delivery trip, the heard a weird crunching noise coming from the autopilot. This noise turned out to be the plastic mounting bracket cracking into little bits under the hose clamps that hold the unit to the pedestal. We had been sailing downwind in about 15 knots of wind with just the 130 genoa out. We sail this way a lot. The genoa helps keep the bow pointed down wind. Yes, we were wallowing a little as the boat surged down waves but the AP seemed to be keeping up OK ... not really over correcting or swinging wildly. However, we did notice a thin string hanging out of the mechanism.

Further examination showed that we could just realign and tighten the clamps and the AP would be oriented ok and still work. So that's what we did. The we trimmed off the hanging string, and a few chucks of the plastic mount, and continued on toward home.

We covered the next 1000 or so miles towards Florida and while we used the system every day, we were basically motoring or motor-sailing the ICW ditch all the way to Florida. This is no great strain of an autopilot. Basically you set it to steer straight ahead and then click in small adjustments as required.

We made it to Stuart, Florida and the junction of the ICW with the St Lucie River where we elected to go across Lake Okeechobee to Ft Myers rather than around the Keys, when the AP finally broke... for good it turns out. It broke the drive belt. Turns out that the drive belt is not a user replaceable item ... what?? A part that wears out can't be simply and easily replaced by the end-user??? Oh Great ...you have to send the unit in to the factory for replacement. Bummer.

Well, after fussing with Simrad and Sailnet, we were finally able to get a refund of the purchase price (not including shipping costs) and subsequently bought a Raymarine Linear Drive below decks autopilot. It's had some problems too but we like it a whole lot better. Of course, it's about 3 times more expensive and the installation is much more complicated. There are pictures and a description of that process on this site. (just follow this link)

I'm just guessing here but if your boat is bigger than 30 feet, you're probably asking for trouble with one of these wheel pilots. Unfortunately, they no longer make the old stand-by Autohelm unit with the external (and user replaceable) belt drive. We used one of hose for years with no problems other than the odd broken, but easily replaced belt. We even stitched and taped a belt together once to get us home from the Keys. The repaired belt worked fine and we kept it as a spare for years.