Newporter 40 Selfsteering

[Jim Benbow]

Interested to know if anybody has any knowledge or experience of windvane steering on a Newporter? I am sorting through lists of ideas to set up Sultana for some single handed sailing.

[Dennis Gaffney]

I looked I'n to getting a self steering sail type unit when I had my Newporter. I remember the quotes were expensive, and the weight of the boat was at the upper end of the functionality of the units available. I think it might be hard to integrate the pinion gear system on the Newporter.

I never managed to get a functioning auto-pilot on my boat. The previous owners tried to hook an auto-pilot directly to them wheel on deck. It was way under powered and never worked properly for me.

The boat did have an auto pilot on it at one time. I found the schematic. It was a very old tube set. It was connected to the ruddershaft with a chain. It looked very much like the setup on a bicycle, with the large gear connected to the shaft and the small gear connected to the electric motor mounted beneath. I think that would still work pretty well with a goos sized motor. I was going to hook the auto-pilot to a Raymarine e-80. Never got around to it though. Good luck and fair winds to you

Dennis Gaffney

[Jim Benbow]

I have the original? Wood Freeman autopilot motor and drive still, but I replaced the Wood Freeman control unit with an Australian made TMQ pilot, we had to build a relay switching unit to drive the motor, also replaced my original motor with another one my electronics technician had lying around, as nobody seemed to be able to work out how to switch the first one. The setup I have now has done about 100 hours and has been going fine. I still have all the parts for the Wood Freeman and also the manuals and even a hand drawn wiring diagram. 

Looking at the windvane idea for more reliability and of course they don't use any electrical power esp. for a long trip.

Jim

[bob mitchell]

   I have the original wood freeman parts as well, but it was close to the batteries, and is pretty corroded. However I do plan to use the reduction gears (and motor) that Dennis talks about as the mechanical part on my original pilot house hydraulic helmstation that my boat came with. I am assuming I can integrate the mechanical drives mentioned above with an up to date technology positon/sending system.

[Jim Benbow]

This exactly what I did, using the TMQ, they are fairly robust unit from Australia designed for the commercial fishing industry. The only issue we had was as I said was with getting the pilot to drive the Wood Freeman motor, sorting out how to switch my original one confused a few local experts and I ended up replacing it with another one that worked through the relay box because of the higher current needed to run the motor. I ended up rigging up a pulley and line system running into the pilot house to engage the clutch, I was looking around for a while for a 12 volt linear actuator to do the job, but as yet haven't found one. I would think any of the good pilots should run this system, but using an independant relay box might be advisable. I checked out all my wood freeman drive etc. and I think that it is probably as good as any to drive the steering on a newporter. I think that this Autopilot may have been originally designed for tugboats. I could scan and post the Autopilot manual etc and the hand drawn wiring diagram, I will take some photo's of my setup and post too, once I get home in a couple of weeks Cheers Jim

[bob mitchell]

Sounds good. My situation is a little different, in the sense that, as radical as it sounds (but not so radical considering that I am rebuilding my whole boat) I will no longer have a steering quadrant. The cockpit sole/floor will be up 14", consistent with a standing position looking over the pilot house, and my primary helmstation will be right behind the pilot house in a hard top dodger and hydraulic steering station I added. The secondary station will be at the original hydraulic helmstation in the pilot house. So I am taking all the mechanicals into the pilot house and installing them under the wheel there (one gear on the wheel shaft). This will put the large mechanical advantage of the hydraulic system between the self steering and the rudder, so hopefully it will not require such a beast of a motor. A stepper motor comes to mind, but I have not researched it yet. My emmergency steering will, believe it or not, be a tiller that drops onto the rudder post.

 

[Dennis Gaffney]

Bob,

Sounds like you are setting up your helm station so that you can actually see where you'are going. Is that allowed om a Newporter? Whenever I was in tight quarters on my Newporter, I would stand with one foot on the poop deck and steer with the other foot while holding on to the Mizzen boom, a maneuver that is familiar to all Newporter pilots.

Dennis

[Clyde A. Phillips]

I saw your request for discussion on a self steering setup earlier today and having no experience in such things I let it go.  But then, rereading the request, I remembered my experience in sailing Moonfleet from Cape May (NJ) to the eastern end of Long Island (NY), a 24 hour passage on one tack.  When first on watch I trimmed the sails and spent my trick at the wheel not at the wheel.  I never said pea-turkey to anyone, just wanted to see if anyone would notice.  Mind you, I’m not what I’d call an expert at sailing, but I figured with four sails I should be able to just let the boat do all the work. 

 

I first set her to sail as best she could for what appeared to be the best speed.  That was very close to the way she was handed to me so I didn’t have much to do.  I did check to see if the jib and main were doing their best, then I hardened up the stays’l and eased off the mizzen.  What happened was that the hard stays’l had a tendency to cause her to fall off.  The slightly eased mizzen then picked up a little more wind, shifting the center of effort aft somewhat and this made her head up into the wind again.  She would hold her own on that wind forever.  Of course, the wind will shift and left alone the boat will shift with it, taking you where you may not want to go.  Some adjustment is required when the wind moved around the compass some and that is mostly done with just the mizzen alone or mizzen and stays’l together.  We had a rather steady wind for the full two days of the trip, and yes, a couple of the crew wanted to know how I could hold a course without touching the wheel.

 

Be aware that this type of sailing, like sailiing a boat or flying a plane on autopilot, does not relieve the helmsman of the responsibility to keep a sharp eye on the compass and on nearby traffic.

 

Peace,

       Clyde

 

[Clyde A. Phillips]

Howdy all,

 

I noticed that everyone seemed to miss the fact that Jim wasn’t asking about autopilots, it was wind vane steering he is looking for.  My original remarks are above, but I have a couple of things to add to the whole discussion.

 

Wood-Freeman was the unit we installed most, but other units were used.  Since I only sailed brand new Newporters (well, I did sail some “used” ones but they weren’t old) I never sailed one with a well used autopilot.  I did sail one with a remote on a long wire, long enough to steer from the pulpit with wire to spare.  It’s use was simple; dangle it upside-down and the boat held its course.  Hold it vertically with the correct face forward you steer by tipping the top left or right for the turn you want.  Hold it vertical and when your new course is settled in just dangle it again.  No external switches, just internal mercury switches.

 

The wind vanes I’ve looked at all were linked to a small “rudder” hinged to the trailing edge of the rudder.  It is actually a trim tab the moves opposite to the rudder movement needed.  The problem I see (I always see problems, don’t I, Bob?) is that a properly rigged Newporter (I’m the expert on a properly rigged Newporter, just ask me) has a dinghy gripped up in the davits and the rudder is well tucked up under the counter stern.  Finding a good place for the vane is not impossible, but the linkage to the rudder might be some kind of nightmare.  Steering vanes work best on boats with “outboard” rudders, and I expect that double-enders would be there favorite mount.

 

Keep your eyes on the pie,

 

            Clyde

[Eddie Offermann]

Clyde, I still have that wonderful Wood-Freeman on my boat (though at the moment it's not working). I like it because it looks like if you dropped it off a building, it would hurt the ground, and that seems borne out by its reputation. It certainly makes the Raymarine unit I have on my other boat look like a cheap, lightweight gadget. Concensus on the Wood-Freeman is that I probably just need to whack it with a mallet, but I'm waiting to get the engine in her next week before I worry about the autopilot!

 

As for steering, Clyde's summary is exactly what I was wanting to read here. Ketch rigs are said to be ideal for singlehanded or shorthanded sailing for exactly this reason: you can steer without touching the wheel, and once balanced, the boat will steer herself in much the way that you'd intend to do with a steering vane.

 

I've seen wind vanes set up for steering boats with a similar aft configuration to the Newporters, and it's typically an ugly set of steel pipes to hold a vane to a rudder on the vane itself. As someone else noted, with the Newpie40's heft, I think that you'd be at the maximum end of the practical physics of the thing.

[Hans Petrie]

Well, it would seem that the windvane would be in the way of the davits and ability to launch a skiff.  I have found the davits so incredibly useful I pretty much gave up on the idea of using a windvane.  The full keel Newporter tracks so well that I find Captain Bungee can pretty much sail the vessel on his own.  I attach one of Captain Bungee's hooks to a spoke of the wheel and run him around the compass pedestal (probably that has a name but I'm not coming up with it right now).  The other hook I attach to either the same wheel spoke or another wheel spoke.   The result is a firm tension on the wheel that gives slightly as wind pressure increases.   Captain Bungee is capable of sailing on his own on any kind of reach.  Alas though, he cannot sail downwind.  So that leaves you with a windvane, autopilot, or more crew as the only solution.

 

[Hans Petrie]

Binnacle.  I suddenly remembered the name of the compass pedestal!

[Eddie Offermann]

For most of this weekend's sail bringing SoNice from her former home down in Long Beach to her new home up in Marina Del Rey, I steered entirely by adjusting the mizzen. Briefly, we tied off the wheel to get a little more speed than we could pick up otherwise, as Hans said "Captain Bungee".

I had read Clyde's great synopsis of Moonfleet's NJ to NY sail and figured we'd give it a try. Even tacking is straightforward, though if you're flying the jib it'll help to have extra hands on the winches: otherwise, it's every bit as automatic as the rest of it - just turn the wheel the direction you want her to tack and when she comes across irons, just let it go and she'll settle right back in where she ought, exactly opposite the wind.

I had issues with the clubfoot getting snagged on its own slide a few times and had to wiggle it loose or it would throw off sail balance, but it's really all about making all of the sails into a wing shape that'll take you where you need to go.

It was a LOT easier than I ever anticipated it would be. We had it working within a couple minutes and SoNice ended up carrying us along, scarcely attended to, for about 8 of 12 hours.