From: Jonathan Harrison
Sent: April-21-08 7:00 AM
To: Will Curry
Subject: Replacement shaft

Will,

We’ve had 10 days away on the boat and can report the Hydrovane is absolutely superb!

I attach a picture of it on the boat when afloat and some pictures of it in use.

The first day out we had light winds and were close hauled – we set the boat up, pulled the retaining pins out, and it just worked – absolutely magic!!

That day it sailed us for 8 hours without a hand on it. It performed equally well with a 30 knots of wind on the beam and 10 knots of wind from astern. In fact we couldn’t believe how well it worked – brilliant!

The boat (which has always been a handful in reverse) is actually a little more stable – we leave the Hydrovane locked fore-aft and this seems to help her track a little better and we did the impossible aft we launched – reversed 200 yards in a perfectly straight line out of the marina – never done that before!

I do have a couple of little points to raise:

1) The gold coloured metal on the tiller arm has started to get little rust spots on it already – should this happen? It happened when the boat was out of the water after we had fitted the unit – so it wasn’t even salt water that caused it (it subsequently got a little worse when launched and used). Is this normal or should we do something to prevent it?

[Editor’s Comment – This is a bit of residue iron from the ‘shot blasting’ process. It will oxidize away soon enough.]

2) When motoring we remove the vane, but the head of the unit still vibrates – obviously due to the prop wash on the rudder. I have checked the alignment of the drive unit and it has skewed off to one side very slightly since fitting (I will re-align and tighten the bolts up as much as possible next time we go down to the boat). Provided I re-align the rudder and lock it fore-aft when motoring, will this slight vibration damage the unit? (Obviously I will remove the rudder if doing lots of motoring.)

[Editor’s note: On some boats vibration from the engine transmits through the hull and can cause either or both the rudder and drive unit to chatter. Best to minimize it by securing with strong bungee chords]

Thanks

Jonny

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