From: Colin Bastable
Sent: October 17, 2015
To: Will Curry; John Curry
Subject: Frank (Sadler 34) Hydrovane fitting pics.

Hi all.

Back in March you asked if I had any photos showing the installation of my Hydrovane.

I have only just returned to the boat, which is in St Croix, and I took some pics. Not especially pretty but if anyone needs a reference for installing on a Sadler 34 then they are adequate.

Once you had helped me repair the twisted shaft (mid Atlantic) the Hydrovane went from “bloody” to “bloody marvellous!”

Colin Bastable
“Frank”

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FROM THE BLOG….

9. My Hydrovane did not work. It kept wanting me to head to port. But my satcom did work, so eventually I emailed the company and sent them some photos. It transpired that a boat had hit my stern (probably in Gosport Marina) and bashed the Hydrovane rudder drive out of line. So with some great tech support from Hydrovane, mid Atlantic, I hung off the stern and with some nifty spanner work set things right.

10. Before fixing the Hydrovane I had been using my Autohelm. The original one burned out in Bascay when it was deluged with water and shorted out, but I found a replacement on eBay, and fitted it in January ’15. The problem being that it required a lot of battery power, which meant running the engines, and also lengthy spells of hand steering. It is easy to lose concentration when hand steering, especially close to the wind, when a tied tiller is not so effective.

11. I can heartily recommend a (working!) Hydrovane. As soon as I had it set correctly, it worked flawlessly all the way to The Caribbean.

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