From: Vanja Sorensen
Sent: April 17, 2012
To: John Curry
Cc: Will Curry
Subject: FW: Zuanelli 40 – Hydrovane Installed

Hi John,

We bought the Hydrovane in August 2009 but to test it properly we had to do some serious sailing outside the Mediterranean sea. In September 2011 we finally managed to leave our home port in the northern Adriatic (Italy), and have since then in the period from September 2011 to March 2012, covered 7000 miles. Currently our boat, “Viatrix” a Zuanelli 40 is in Rio Grande in the south of Brazil waiting for us to return for the next leg of the journey.

So far the Hydrovane has made an excellent job, whenever we have had more than a few hours of sailing we would “leave him at the wheel” and we reckon the Hydrovane has done 85% of all the steering during this trip, we were especially pleased with the performance through 800 miles of close hauled sailing during our crossing from Mindelo, Capo Verde to Salvador de Bahia. As explained on your site and as confirmed by many fellow sailors, once the boat is balanced the Hydrovane copes very well with practically all sea conditions.

Our Hydrovane still looks (almost) new, we only had two pins on the rudder blade (part no. 62) breaking and would like to buy 3 new ones from you. Please let us know how to place the order.

We have approximately 1mm of play on the upper shaft bearing, is this normal? If not what parts need to be replaced?

Please also see attached photos, we are quite proud of the installation and thought you may want to publish one of the fotos so that the Zuanelli 40 gets represented in your gallery.

Thank you, Maurizio and Vanja

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