Something from Dorworth, Rude Pundit saying what needs to be said, and the ongoing plight of billionaire snowflakes...
I'm pretty sure that the average cost of a new self-steering gear is somewhere around $4.5K all up these days.
That's really a lot of money for a piece of gear that is inherently simple. Especially when most of the designs around are easily reverse engineered, well suited for home building with readily available affordable materials.
Fact is, I'm sitting here contemplating building a couple of designs based on a clone of the Auto-Helm or the very basic Moitessier style Trismus design.
They both have a lot to offer, are well proven with countless ocean crossings, and will pretty much steer you wherever you want to go.
Mainly, I'm just trying to come up with the bottom line least expensive self-steering gear that does the job with the least downside.
Self-steering for the VolksCruiser budget and lifestyle if you will...
One other gear I'd really like to find, so I can test it in comparison of more modern gears, is the old John Adam designed version of the Windpilot vertical axis auxiliary rudder gear.
So, if anybody reading this knows of one gathering dust in the back of your local yacht grot (spelled c-h-e-a-p) for sale please drop me a line.
Listening to Lucinda Williams cover Hendrix with Charles Lloyd & The Marvels.
So it goes...
