Subject: RE: Hydrovane Parts for Swan 38
From: Alison Burnett
Date: Fri, September 11, 2009 8:39 pm
To: Will Curry

Hello Will

Sorry for the long delay, hope you had a good weekend

We bought our Hydrovane self-steering at the 2000 London Boat Show, once it was installed we christened him Harold after my grandfather who was a keen sailor but in his 90’s when we left for our first transatlantic cruise.

Harold is an amazing part of our crew on Roxi and to look aft and see the vane cheerily keeping us on course can be mesmerizing. We use him upwind, downwind and even with our asymmetric spinnaker

Have included some photos for your gallery:

The Old Harold:

We are in the Galapagos Islands, Simon is holding up the old vane with its patchwork of repairs telling its history, this vane took us on; one Atlantic circuit from Europe in 2000-2001, into the Med for 18 months – it didn’t get as much use during that trip, and then in 2006 from Portugal across the Atlantic again, through Venezuela to San Blas, through Panama, down to Ecuador and across to the Galapagos Islands. There in Isabella – our departure point for the Marquesas – in May 2007 we decided to treat Harold to the spare vane cover which we had stowed aboard.

The Atlantic 2006:

This our original vane cover with its many patched repaired still working happily to take us West

Tropical Sailing:

Our new vane cover with Harold beating towards Minerva Reef May 2008 So far the new one has taken us from Galapagos to NZ, then on a 4,000 mile trip up to Tonga and Fiji and back to NZ, we are still many miles from home so am sure the repairs needed in the future will start to have their own story.

We have no photos of our installation – which we are very happy with – and currently ‘Harold’ is not attached to Roxi’s stern as we will be painting our hull, if you would be interested we can send some at the end of the year when our refit should be completed.

Best wishes

Alison and Simon