True Stories

From: Sue Cross
Sent: May 22, 2016
To: Will Curry
Subject: Thanks!

Bob and one very experienced sailing friend are currently (May, 2016) making the passage the “wrong way” from New Zealand to Tahiti. A deep low just ran into a high and produced a storm with a “squash” effect. They headed north to miss the worst, but still encountered 40 knot winds and big, rough seas, mostly astern. Here is Bob’s report after the wind abated a bit and the HF radio was able to make a connection:

” …stormsail does a real good job. Hydrovane a miracle.”

They were actually able to get some sleep (strapped into their bunks) during the 48 hours of the storm.

Thanks, Hydrovane!

Sue

From: Morris [Sailmail email]
Sent: April 28, 2016
To: Will Curry
Subject: Windvane Saved the Day

Hi Will and Sarah, just wanted to drop you a note to let you know we made it to Nuku Hiva from PV. Our boat and two others had autopilot failures. One boat turned back to PV and the other hand steered all the way to Hiva Oa.

Our autopilot failed a third of the way but we had “Jane” our trusty Hydrovane. She got us thru it all with minimal hand steering. We now know a lot more about how to set her up and how to balance the sails. I even got her working when we did some motor sailing.

Thanks for a great product.

Morris and Debbie Adams

Hey Sarah and Will,

I just thought I’d write a quick thank you for all the hassle you went through to get that wind vane to me in St. Maarten back in December/January. I’m now in the Galapagos Islands and the Hydrovane has been absolutely rock solid so far. The test-run was a down-wind sail in heavy seas along the North coast of Colombia. I’ve had experience with [servo system], [servo system] and [servo auxiliary system] and I can honestly say that the hydrovane has performed much better than any of the others so far. I’m without a doubt a happy customer.

Cheers!
Alex

[Editor Note: Shipping to St. Maarten is not usually a hassle. This was a unique situation involving shipping to the USA and a freight forwarder]

From: Rustler 36 Owner
Sent: April 15, 2016
To: Sarah Curry
Subject: Re: Bearing Kit

ps… for information the Hydrovane has been completely reliable and has steered me some 15,000 miles since fitting in 1997. The only replacement has been one new sail cover and 4 new cords for the wheel steering. [Remote Course Setting Line]

There is some play in the bottom of the shaft, hence the need to replace the bearings, and as I leave the rudder attached all the time the hole for the shaft in the top have become oval and oversized.

I have a Rustler 36 and highly recommend Hydrovane.

…

I use it all the time in preference to an Autohelm or a human crew as it is more reliable and doesn’t complain.

I intend to replace the shaft bearings at some stage but I need to measure the shaft diameter before ordering.

From: Tom Logisch
Sent: April 06, 2016
To: Will Curry; John Curry
Subject: WG: Hydrovane

Here is an email in German from our customer with the Lagoon 39 iCat; you can use this for your website.

TRANSLATION:

“We’ve used the wind vane last year more extensively. Once we get the hang of what grid where in sails we are very satisfied. We took control with main / genoa and Parasail. Once we had to tighten all the screws. We are so far very satisfied.”

—

Von: Zoltan
Gesendet: 6. April 2016
An: tom logisch
Betreff: Re: Hydrovane

Hallo Tom.

Wir haben die Windfahne letztes Jahr ausgiebiger benutzt. Nach dem wir den Dreh raus hatten welchen Raster bei welcher Besegelung sind wir sehr zufrieden. Wir sind die Steuerung mit Gross/Genua und Parasail gefahren. Einmal mussten wir noch alle Schrauben nachziehen.

Wir sind also bisher sehr zufrieden.

Gruss

Zoltan

Hi Will/Sarah

We used the Hydrovane for the first time this weekend. Lights airs, dead astern. Aunty Ida worked faultlessly, was easy to set up and given that she is set well off center the response is amazing.

A little disappointed with the [defective sunbrella DRIVE UNIT] cover as a hole has appeared after only two weeks of the UK weather. I’ll send some better photo’s when I have the chance.

Regards

Dean

From: Jack Ormerod
Sent: March 11, 2016
To: Will Curry
Subject: Re: New Parts For Hydro Generator

Hi Will,

Our crossing was great, thanks! We had to go around Hurricane Alex and divert to Mindelo for two days and then we had a fifteen day crossing from there to Guadeloupe.

The Hydrovane was great…

…

This was our sail configuration a lot of the time while also using the Hydrovane. By using our stay sail I didn’t need to have a lot of the main sail out. Hydrovane liked this configuration.

From: Jeremy Spencer
Sent: March 28, 2016
To: Will Curry
Subject: Parts for Sal Darago

Dear Will,

On 25/10/2007 I bought a VXA 2D M/HH Hydrovane unit. I fitted it to Sal Darago, our 36ft Westerly Solway. In 2008 my wife and I set off around the world. We returned to Lancashire, England in the summer of 2014 having achieved our aim.

Unfortunately, on a close inspection, we find that “Heidi” our Hydrovane, which steered magnificently at all times under sail, has three items which need replacement and one spare is also required. Apart from a new dress while we were in the tropics, no other work was required on Heidi, which is quite a testament.

• Vane knob or clamp (part 32)
• Axis knob or clamp (part 33)
• Bottom collar with set screw (part 26)
• Locking pin and retaining clip (part not known)

…

Best wishes,

Jeremy Spencer

[Editor’s Note: Esa kindly forwarded us his email response to a potential customer who reached out for feedback about performance on the HR 42E]

From: Esa Kalervo
Sent: March 23, 2016

Thanks John,

Here is my answer.

Esa

—

Hi Massimiliano,

I have sailed with my Hydrovane about 55 000 nautical miles and I can recommend it.

The most important thing is that it is totally independent of boat’s steering system. We had during our first Atlantic Crossing 2012 problem with steering cable and we used Hydrovane tiller while fixing that problem.

Mizzen boom

We have not used mizzen while sailing close hauled upwind. Mizzen gives practically no power in that situation. You just keep boom on one side with preventers.

There is no problem while you sail downwind. Just be carefull with preventers.

I have used topping lift to get boom high enough while gybing. But one should be very carefull.

Shaft locking pin has broken many times because of propeller’s effect to the rudder. One should have spare pins onboard. We have changed vane cover perhaps once per year because of sun.

As a whole I am very satisfied with my Hydrovane. 90% of our circumnavigation was downwind sailing. F.ex. between Cape town and St Helena we sailed five days and nights in a row just with Spinnaker on and Hydrovane took care of steering.

We spent last year from June to November in the Mediterranean and visited f.ex. Southern Sardinia and Southern Sicily, then Pantelleria and Lampedusa while sailing to the east. Later we visited Messina and Olbia.

We are now in Plymouth, UK, and sailing back to Helsinki where we are in the middle of May.

I will be happy to answer if you have any more questions or comments.

Esa Kalervo

s/y Marisol

Please use in the future this email address instead of sailmail address

From: Ian Sprigings
Sent: January 03, 2016
To: Will Curry
Subject: Watermaker

Hi Will,

Firstly, happy new year to you all.

We have now crossed the Atlantic and are currently in Bequia in the Grenadines. I must say the Hydrovane was an absolute joy to have and certainly one of the best decisions we made when kitting out the boat. We felt very grateful when we kept coming across boats that had had issues with their electronic autopilots.

The Watt & Sea was also brilliant, albeit a constant challenge to keep weed off it during the crossing!

The Echotec watermaker has also worked very well, but we currently have an issue that I would like your help with. When running it today in the anchorage I noticed what I thought was water coming out of the control panel. I assumed it was probably a joint that had come slightly undone as it was only a very small amount. On taking out the panel I noticed that the rubber grommet at the top of the pressure gauge had come out and the water was in fact the oily liquid from within the pressure gauge. There is now about 1/2 an inch air gap at the top of the gauge.

Is this an issue? What actually is the fluid? Should I top it up?

Many thanks for your help.

Best wishes

Ian Sprigings.

[Editor’s note: The leak on the pressure gauge was simply because the nipple on the top needed to be pricked to release the air.]

From: Chris Mennem
Sent: February 29, 2016
To: Will Curry
Subject: Hydrovane endorsement

Dear Will,

I don’t think that I have ever written to a company before, to endorse a product of theirs, but my wife and I have been so impressed with the Hydrovane that I wanted to let you know this.

We ordered the unit in January 2015, and it was quickly delivered to our winter base in Sicily, in strong, well-designed shipping boxes. I found it straight forward to mount on the back of our Jeanneau 45.2, with the help of your simple and clear instructions. I was immediately impressed with the quality and engineering of the Hydrovane, and my respect for it has grown with each passage we have done.

We left Sicily in May 2015, and worked our way to Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde islands, Barbados and currently St. Lucia, from where I write this in late February 2016. With every passage we were able to use it more, and on the Atlantic passage, it steered us perfectly for over 90% of the trip. On one occasion we were wing-on-wing for over 8 days, with winds to 30kts, at about 150° apparent, with waves big enough to surf down, and the Hydrovane coped perfectly all this time – absolutely amazing!

With just two of us on board, I wanted a system that was simple and effective to operate, and it has exceeded my most optimistic expectations by a considerable margin. It truly is our third crew member.

On a separate note, I wanted to show you the vane mounting bracket I designed and had made. Somehow I got the measurements wrong and the vane, when mounted on top of the unit, fouled the arch. Having spoken to you, I did not want to make the vane smaller, and therefore came up with the bracket, which lowers the vane by 230mm/9’’ and now clears the arch, regardless of articulation or direction of the vane. The bracket had to lower the vane to one side, so this had to be counter-balanced on the opposite side. I have used zinc anodes and stainless washers to obtain perfect static balance and intend to tidy this up and make it more attractive now I know it works – perfectly! The design was a bit tricky, to ensure that it cannot foul any part of the Hydrovane itself, but I think it looks ok and, most importantly, as I mentioned earlier, it works 100% – all the way across the Atlantic. I just thought you might be interested, if you have not seen this done before.

Thanks again for your advice whilst we were mid-Atlantic.

Warm regards,

Chris Mennem

From: Peter Harvey
Sent: January 29, 2016
To: Will Curry; Sarah Curry
Subject: Re: Installation Bowman 48 Chanto

Hi Will and Sarah,

Just to let you know that we got to grips with the hydrovane, which worked brilliantly when our electrical autopilot failed on the ARC. We even got you some free publicity in PBO!

We very slightly altered the rudder alignment in Las Palmas after our discussion, as we decided it may have been very fractionally off centre and perhaps that made the difference. The only other change was a new cover.

We had a poled out double headsail downwind rig and the hydrovane coped with the swell even in relatively low apparent wind (eg even when we were only doing 6 knots downwind in 13 knots of true wind speed), as well as in 25-30 knots and heavier swell. We generally used it with the vane in upright position (otherwise on certain wind directions it could knock against a gps sensor at extreme deflection) and on the left hand setting. Perhaps we might benefit from your new extendable stubby, but there didn’t seem to be a problem in the upright position.

We learnt when setting it to look at the hydrovane and if it was more frequently nodding one way , adjusted the wheel to make it more even, nodding both ways equally. Once set it would then just run for hours on end with occasional course adjustments when the wind shifted to keep us on the great circle route!

We did have a problem with fields of sargasso weed though! It didn’t like weed and could go off by 40 degrees, but sailing backwards freed it and also loads of weed from the keel, which had been slowing us down.

Many thanks for your help.

Peter Harvey

From: Alain SANIEZ
Sent: January 26, 2016
To: John Curry ; Will Curry
Subject: A bit of a feedback

One year I ordered our new best mate: Hydrovane

As many people consider self steering system as absolutely unuseful with modern designed boat like Hanse, making that choice was challenging.

We sailed from New Zealand to South Africa, nearly 10000 miles. We have been using both our Hydrovane and the two in board autopilot made by Jefa, with their Simrad wind vane. We did a lot of test trying to challenge each with the other. We sailed the 1000 miles from New Zealand to New Caledonia with the Hydrovane only: it was great and HV did a great job with winds between 10 to 45 kt. Thanks for this beautiful piece a gear which is more than…a piece of gear but a real third mate on board!

You find here under some pics: installation on board of Uhambo, a Hanse 430e, and an overall picture of the visitor’s pontoon in Noumea where we could count nine Hydrovane at the same time!!!!

Kind regards

Alain

Photo: Custom top bracket that incorporates structure for [another windvane servo model] that was removed in NZ.

From: Eugene Motzheim
Sent: October 26, 2015
To: John Curry

Hi again

New pictures, the choice is yours!

I forgot to tell you what a splendid job the Hydrovane is doing! Our boat is 40 ft/10 tons/draft 2,30 m with a spade rudder. On our trip this summer we were out on the North Sea for 74 hours with winds from 10 to 40 knots, wave height was up to 5m, breaking seas because of tidal streams. We sailed both uppwind and reaching, the latter can be a bit delicate because of the big IOR-belly our Jonmeri has. But, the Hydrovane was just steering and steering, required no attention at all! As we sail shorthanded, husband/wife, the vane became soon our best mate. Better than our Neco, who gave up two weeks ago – electrical problems…

Regards,

Jonmeri 40 “Move On” from Sweden
Eugene & Angelien

From: Nick Fabbri
Sent: September 22, 2015
To: Will Curry
Subject: Re: Watt and sea generator for Southerly 38

…

We used the unit across biscay in force 3-6. We had the unit on the smallest ratio setting , so it barely moved the rudder with the wind. This resulted in a very straight course.

It works admirably, in fact I professed to having a crush on it, as it was so useful.

As for feedback…..

Well we met another southerly 38 with one attached on starboard (ours in on port). We both had to compensate for the drag by locking the wheel off centre. Ours is about 5 degrees to starboard, his to port.

It is correct that the sails need to be balanced.

Also we are still not 100% about which way to pull the string to change course. However that will come with time. It’s just practice.

I have no real negatives or criticism of the unit. It will hopefully steer us over the Atlantic and beyond .

One point is that we have a lifting keel. The rudder needs to be removed before drying out.

Also we are not sure whether to antifoul the rudder as it goes green quickly.

Finally, an installation tip. We have a modern production yacht which is cad designed . Strange angles all over the transom. Thus a nightmare to get the angles correct to keep the brackets parallel to the mast.

However eventually we used an electronic spirit level app on an iPhone. We could work out precisely what the angles were, and transfer that to the band saw to cut the pads.

Also if you keep the other piece of wood from the angulated cut, it can be used to level out the angle of the backing plate, thus ensuring perfectly aligned bolts .

Anyway, I look forward to getting your quote, after that I will see if our budget can stretch.

Regards

Nick fabbri