True Stories

From: Keith Marsicola
Sent: May 30, 2020
To: Sarah Curry
Subject: First Sail on Lucky

Hi Hydrovane Team,

Wendi and I went sailing today after completing the installation and setup earlier in the day.  We were so awed by the vanes performance.  We sailed in 12 – 15 knots of breeze about 60 – 70 degrees off the wind with our inner jib and full main.  The vane steered our 40K pound boat with ease.  The vane would tip 5 to 10 degrees and the rudder would make an immediate correction and the vane would be back up straight, almost instantaneously.  I know we were a little worried that the rudder had the power to steer our big girl, but it was a perfect marriage!  We made some course adjustments for fun and the boat responded happily.

We sat in the cockpit mesmerized by the vane.  It’s been nearly 20 years since we last used a servo-pendulum vane crossing the Pacific.  Today we both agreed the Hyrdovane is a superior piece of equipment! 

We’ll send a set of finished pictures soon.  Thanks for all.

Keith & Wendi

From: Nigel Fox
Sent: December 22, 2019
To: Will Curry
Subject: 4000nm down much more to go

Hi ya Will,

Well some 4000nm on the hydrovane now. So I have now passed the most southern, eastern and northern parts of Australia so far.

Now for the hop across to Indonesia and then around those parts for a while.

The Hydrovane has certainly made me “balance” the yacht a lot better to the point where I can sail a rhum line with minimal tweaks on the sails to keep her on course.

Weaving through the Gt Barrier Reef was an interesting exercise with one encounter while crossing a shipping lanes at a headland to find a Panamax overtaking a bulk carrier.

So an aquatic version of John Candy dresses as the devil laughing maniacally as per Planes Trains and automobiles while both ships passed me either side. Ahhh the joys of playing chicken with over a hundred thousand tons of shipping coming right at you doing 18 knots in an 8 ton yacht. Even more so when constrained by land and reefs. Who said sailing was dull?

The passing through the Gugari Rip (Hole in tbe Wall) was yet another highlight as was the Wessal islands.

While never anchoring for more than three days at any one spot due to crocodiles.

So absolutely no swimming as those things scare me more than sharks.

Many more adventures to be had around Asia in the coming months.

Cheers

Nige.

Picture one exiting the Rip. I went through at low tide it was tight at it’s narrowest.

Picture two, Stinky keeping a watch on an island just in case.

From: E. Jerry Jones
Sent: May 18, 2020
To: John Curry
Subject: hydrovane

Aloha John,

We had your Hydrovane installed late last year and love it. Any suggestions on how to preserve it when not in use other than lubrication, canvas cover perhaps? We sail regularly and use our mechanical auto pilot and only use the vane on longer distance trips.

Best,

Jerry

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From: John Curry
Sent: May 18, 2020
To: ‘E. Jerry Jones’
Subject: RE: hydrovane

Hi Jerry

Good to hear from you.

As always to keep the girl (or is it a boy?) clean, soap and fresh water are good to rid it of any salt or grunge build up. No greasing or oiling with substances that are likely to collect dust. Liberal and periodic spraying with WD 40 is good enough. The aluminum castings would like a spraying with a corrosion inhibitor to keep them looking pristine. Yup, and even no special attention seems to be OK. One exception is to get the vane out of the sun. The fabric reaches old age fairly quickly.

Cheers

John

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From: E. Jerry Jones
Date: May 18, 2020
Subject: RE: hydrovane
To: John Curry

Yes I remove the fabric cover and the rudder also when not in use. We call it Chung Pau but please don’t ask why. He works as you know extremely well in heavy air. Next time I use the Hydrovane I’ll try and remember to send you a couple pics.

Thanks Jerry

From: Jay E.
Sent: April 26, 2020
To: Will Curry
Subject: Support

Aloha Will,

I just wanted to say thank you for all your support. I know I probably called you a handful of times while installing my Hydrovane. Avalon has been the best crew member yet working 24\hours a day out steering everyone. I also like that I don’t need to feed her and she doesn’t drink the last beer. It was 1680 nm down to Panama and I’d say she steered 1500. Light winds, heavy winds on all points of sail she held a tight line.

Thanks again,

Jay
S/V Wandersurf

Walt Lloyd
Catalina 42 Mk 1

Since my recent installation, just before the Covid 19 shutdown, I’ve taken one shakedown sail with the Hydrovane as I’m readying my boat for cruising and I always singlehand. On the trip out the wind started light at 5 to 8 knots and to my surprise the Hydrovane sailed the boat beautifully. By the afternoon, upon approaching the island, the winds had increased to a steady 16 to 20 with an occasional gust of a few knots more. The Hydrovane was again a champ. I tweaked the sails a couple of times and adjusted the vane a few times but for the most part I just laid back and enjoyed the weather and the relaxation. A week later on the return to LA the wind was a pretty steady 10 to 12 and I basically just set the Hydrovane and let it be, except I couldn’t help watching it constantly in awe at how efficient it was. I can tell that I will need to build up my library, as the Hydrovane has taken a lot of the work away from me leaving me with plenty more time to read. Thanks for the advice and great service.

Walt Lloyd

From: Randy Dinger
Sent: March 24, 2020
To: will@hydrovane.com
Subject: Accolades

Will & Sarah

We are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in route to Hawaii. Not our first choice, but that is a long story.

Our Hugo (the hydrovane) has been most impressive. 20-30 knots in 10’ seas and just keeps on slugging through it. We are so happy. And so are our fridge and water maker. Because they run anytime they wish.

Hope all is well with your family.

Randy & Shellie
S/V Moondance

From: Alex Mansfield <a.p.mansfield@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2019 5:54 AM
To: John Curry; Will Curry; Sara Curry
Subject: Hydrovane performance and installation on Moody 376 Twoflower

Dear Hydrovane team,

It’s been a few months now since we installed our Hydrovane, which has given us some time to test its performance on our Moody 376. And we can say that we are very happy with the performance and usability of the Hydrovane.

We have used in on various passages between Gibraltar and here in the Canaries, via the Algarve and Madeira, and found it to work well in a variety of conditions, from handling gusts and squalls, to steering us downwind in light airs. We would certainly recommend the Hydrovane to anyone looking to install a wind vane on our boat like ours.

However, the installation itself we found extremely challenging and frustrating, taking the two of us seven long days. We would like to share with you some of the difficulties we faced along with some feedback that we hope could make the experience easier for other Hydrovane customers in the future.

Problems during installation

We found that there were more constraints in the ways that the joints could move than we had realised from the materials we had read in advance – for example, the constraints on the angles that the joints can rotate through. These constraints eliminated a lot of the ideas about how to mount it – in fact we realised there are only a couple of possible ways a Hydrovane could be mounted without changing the original fittings. This left us mounting in one of the ways used by a Moody 376 before in the proposal you sent us. Some diagrams, animations or videos showing these constraints might have helped us have better ideas and get our expectations right from the start.

The above is important because it also affects the parts that are actually needed for mounting. In our case, even though we mounted the unit in the same ways as illustrated in the proposal, we still found that two of the parts we bought from you were not the right size.

Firstly, the H bracket pad was not thick enough to make the wedge shape required to get the shaft vertical given the constraints of the H bracket itself and the shape of our hull. We would have required at least a 35mm thick pad.

Secondly, we needed one longer strut for the A bracket, of 88cm i.e. 8cm longer than the shipped 80cm. Given that we ended up mounting the unit in the same way as shown in the proposal (and on several other Moody 376s we have encountered), we would have thought you would have been able to inform us or at least double check with us about these sizes in advance.

To bring that all together, without guidance from you and without knowing about the constraints, I’m not sure how we ourselves would have anticipated these problems before ordering the parts from you. Perhaps for future preference you can make a note of these issues in case you are preparing an order for another Moody 376 or similar boat?

Finally, the teak pads you supplied already had holes drilled for the bolts. However these holes were not perpendicular to the surface of the pads, and the spacing between the holes did not match the spacing of the bracket castings. This caused us a number of headaches – in particular, as we used the actual brackets and mounting pads to guide us drilling the holes through our hull, this alignment caused us to drill holes at the wrong angle

Surely it is possible to improve the drilling of these holes? Otherwise we believe it would be best to leave the pads without any holes drilled to prevent any confusion.

Ideas for installation

Overall our installation was quite challenging because we also had to deal with shaping the outside pads in very tight spaces and filling the very uneven interior surface of the hull. However we found some techniques that worked well for us that we thought might be interesting to share with you too (see also the attached photos).

In order to shape the pads to the hull, we extended the idea you give in the installation guide of ‘holy-stoning’ the pad onto a piece of sandpaper stuck against the hull. We attached the pad to a palm sander using double sided tape and a large piece of velcro. Using this and pressing against some very coarse sandpaper on the hull made short work of shaping the pads, even in very tight corners with barely any space to move the pad. Despite many people saying that shaping the pads is one of the most time consuming aspects, with this method, this took no time at all!

In order to get flat, perpendicular surfaces for the backing plates on the inside, we used a filling compound and moulded it using the actual backing plate and cheap sacrificial bolts. In order to keep these clean from the filling compound, we covered the back of the backing plate with grease and a sheet of cling film, and wrapped the sacrificial bolts in PTFE tape. We then applied the filling compound and bolted everything in place. Once it was cured, and in no rush, we could still easily remove everything and clean off the PTFE tape and cling film to get a good finish.

Overall then, we thank you again for making this great product and for being so responsive and supportive, and we hope that with our feedback you can improve the experience still further for future customers. For us, we look forward to many miles ahead under sail and Hydrovane.

Best regards,

Alex & Angie

SY Twoflower (Moody 376) in Tazacorte, La Palma

From: Dana Markle
Sent: January 6, 2020
To: ‘Will Curry
Subject: Alma Feroz – Hydrovane

Will,

We finished our installation of the Hydrovane on our Dufour 412, Alma Feroz last week. Saturday we took it on a trial run. We started out on a broad reach with 6 knots of wind. The Hydrovane performed flawlessly. Later in the afternoon the wind picked up to 13 knots and we were at that point sailing close hauled. Once again the Hydrovane performed flawlessly. I can’t express to you how pleased we are with Hydrovane.

The next trip to Catalina Island we will get some video on the crossing as well as some nice still shots with the beautiful island in the background.

Thanks,

​Dana J. Markle

From: svfayaway@gmail.com
Sent: November 25, 2019
To: will@hydrovane.com; irene@hydrovane.com; john@hydrovane.com
Subject: So happy!

Good Morning from halfway between Antigua and Bermuda! Had a chance to install the unit while waiting for weather window in Bermuda. Piece of cake.

We left St Georges last Thursday on heavy (25kt) 2-3m following sea. Our electronic autopilot soon wanted a break, and stopped working. Instructions said to try on a nice day upwind. We did the opposite. Took about 5 minutes to get it working well. So far we’ve had just about all conditions and I must say this unit works very well indeed. Steers much better than us, and certainly better than the latest garmin autopilot. It’s quiet, and uses no power.

Thanks so much for getting this out to us on short notice. We are very grateful to have this well-engineered unit aboard!

one question… the vane sometimes hits the solar panels if there a sudden change to conditions. Usually an adjustment keeps this from being an issue. Is there a shorter vane we can use, or perhaps I can modify this one?

[A: If the vane makes contact with your solar at the end of its deflection it does not effect performance.  You can put a piece of rubber on the solar panel where it makes contact.  We do have the stubby vane assembly which is 12 inches shorter than the standard vane.  Perhaps you can send a photo showing the contact point and I can see if its worth switching vanes.}

thanks again!

Chris & Kelly Jacques

SV Fayaway

Photo: Beating across the Atlantic on our Wauquiez Pretorien 35

Monique sails with us

Published by dhoiland on 11/11/2019

From escape-west.com: https://www.escape-west.com/2019/11/monique-sails-with-us/ 

We discussed it at home, Theresa and myself. We were busy upgrading sy Escape for our trip and did not really focus on crew. You see, there is this thing about sailing long term. Sometimes you want a crew and sometimes you are fine without. Sometimes it is good to have company for a week or two, but we discussed to bring Monique onboard long term. I was a little apprehensive. Another female onboard long term. Hmmm.

We first saw Monique on other boats through YouTube channels that we follow or sailing videos that just pop up when you browse the internet. I admit she was pretty cool, standing tall with her red top in all sorts of weather. After browsing some videos of her, I must admit she caught my interest. I started to research north, south, east and west on the internet and explored all the details I could find. And boy, did I find lots of information on Monique. She does have a fan-club.

Born in 1968 in England. She put her mark on the sailing community already in ’72 at only 4 years old. Pretty impressing achievement and promesing for what to come. At 34 she moved to a new family in Vancouver, Canada. By then, she was already a seasoned blue water sailor and had crewed on numerous circumnavigations. With her pedigree, any sailor have something to learn from her when riding the Atlantic rollers.

‘She should come with us‘ Theresa said one evening as I was looking at Monique on YouTube. ‘I mean, if you are that facinated, she should come‘. That sounded like a decision to me. I shot off an e-mail directly to her father, Will to hear his thoughts on bringing Monique along. I did not have to wait long for the response.

‘Sure she can come with you on your trip’, Will wrote back. I started to ask direct questions, to fill in the white spots. ‘We sail a first 47.7 and that is a sporty boat. Will Monique handle that in some weather? ‘, I asked Will. Promptly Will replied, ‘Monique is sporty but you have to trim the sails and balance the boat‘.

That made me think back to previous crossings where we tied the steering, balanced the boat and let the wind and waves do the job. And by that, we invited her onboard – long term. A week later she arrived from England. She came with us from the start and four of us are happy she did – Vetle, Theresa, myself and Monique

An here I am. Sitting in the cockpit, sipping my coffee, looking at her red top gently swinging from side to side keeping us on course on our journey. She is fine to steer for hours on end and handels windshifts with grace and ease. It is poetry in motion.

Now that we have some experience after 3.000 nautical miles together, we would never go without her and our expectations for the upcoming thousands of miles are high. We are sure she will perform.

It is also good to know that her family in Canada will support her – and us – wherever in the world we will be thus helping us onwards reaching new horizons across the oceans of the blue planet.

Keep going…. Keep seeking out the uncertain with a no-plan plan

Comment; this is our view and we have no commercial connection to Hydrovane

From: John Sandford
Sent: October 14, 2019
To: Gloria Anderson; John Curry; Will Curry
Subject: Landfall 38 installation

Hi Guys

Wanted to share a couple of photos of my hydrovane installation with you.

The only modification I had to make was to move the stern ladder over to port by 150mm

I will need to modify the upright on the stern pulpit to use the emergency tiller extension, but will do that this winter.

The unit works incredibly well and I am extremely satisfied with it.

The build quality is top notch, and it steers better than I do.

…

Thanks for building such a wonderful piece of equipment !

Regards

John

From: Gerard Van Der Horst
Sent: August 1, 2019
To: Will Curry
Subject: Hydrovane Emergency Rudder

On our way from Azores to England our rudder broke and fell off in a “near Gale” 30-35 knots. We steered the remaining 300 miles with the Hydrovane rudder with a tiller arm and a Raymarine 1000 autopilot and arrived after 3 days in Falmouth.

I prepared this 10 years ago and now it was “plug and play”.

We needed some “motorpower” to have enough steerage in the confused sea without the balance of the main Rudder .

Kind Regards

Gerard van der Horst.
Netherlands
sy SYLFER

From: Langer Martin
Sent: 22 July 2019
To: Simon Hall – (Boatworks+ on Guernsey – recommended installer)
Subject: MY WAY, Hydrovane

Dear Simon,

I am writing you today to tell you that a week ago we arrived safely in Porto / Portugal. The windvane worked perfectly, my Crew and myself were astonished just how precise it held course, both upwind and on broad reach. There were no vibrations or other side-effects. The Performance of the wind Generator in case of being becalmed needs some improvement, though ;-))

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS PERFECT JOB!

…

best regards,
Martin
—
Univ.Prof.Dr.Martin Langer
Oberarzt der Universitäts-Frauenklinik

From: W. J. Irwin & Son, Solicitors
Sent:  July 17, 2019
To: sarah@hydrovane.com
Subject: Pins

Hello Sarah,

I recently finished the AZAB2019 race singlehanded and I would like to say to you all how well my Hydrovane, Baldric, behaved. Both in light winds and boad reaching or running in 35 knots, there was never a moment when I doubted his ability to keep us safely on course. Easy to set up, easy to adjust, it was simple to check the course, make sure the vane was not being held over one way for long periods and adjust sails and vane according to the conditions.

However, I do need to order two new pins. They are the weakest point in the system, and I am not sure why they are not twice the diameter they are. I believe Jen-Luc van den Heede replaced his rudder pin with a bolt and self locking nut, having drilled out a much greater diameter hole in the rudder and shaft. I do put a bungee on the safety line when at anchor to stop any rattling and I find that the pin bends over a period of a few days, so I am not surprised that they break after few years. Please send me two pins.

…

Regards,

Tony

Tony Irwin
Solicitor
W. J. Irwin & Son

~~~

From: sarah@hydrovane.com
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 3:54 PM
To: Solicitors, Will, john

Hi Tony,

Congratulations on your successful AZAB! We are glad to hear it! May we post your experience on our website? The feedback is wonderful.

The Locking Pins are a designed weak point – meant to break before anything else does. Usually it is the Shaft Locking Pin that is most prone to metal fatigue from the vibration while motoring.

That being said, prior to the start of the Golden Globe Race 2018 we began manufacturing the Pins out of Super Duplex stainless steel, 3 x stronger than 316.

You are correct that Jean-Luc replaced his Rudder Locking Pin with a bolt (same diameter), and it was his only failed component on the Hydrovane. Jean-Luc’s report: “Just to tell you that I was VERY happy with my Hydrovane. I change absolutely NOTHING since the start of the race except fixation of the rudder … but it’s my fault. I replace your shaft by a bolt made in a special stainless steel which supposed to be very strong and … it breaks after canarias! So I install (not easy at sea!) your original one and it doesn’t break!”

Here is a quote, in GBP:

28.00 – 2 Super Duplex Locking Pins
8.00 – Royal Mail
43.20 TOTAL including VAT

…

Cheers,

Sarah Curry
Hydrovane International Marine Inc.
Office: 2424 Haywood Ave. | West Vancouver, BC | V7V 1Y1 | Canada | +1 604-925-2660
Manufacturing: Nottingham | United Kingdom
www.hydrovane.com | http://svkaiquest.com

From: Paul Furneaux
Sent: June 26, 2019
To: will@hydrovane.com
Subject: New quote

Hi Will

Can you please give me a price for a Hydrovave and mounting rig for my Vancouver 32.

I have had an HV on my Nicholson 32 which I have recently sold. I found the rig to be outstanding and completely dependable in every respect, I loved it.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards

Paul Furneaux