Hardest thing I've installed ...

Posted By: Mark N, Nimble Arctic, Jax FL
Date: 5/5/07 6:29p.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: autopilot (John White)

on my Arctic was the ST1000+ tillerpilot. The 1000 is the same size as the 2000 but it is a little slower and does not create as much force. The instructions called for the unit to be mounted 18" forward of the rudder pivot post but that area was taken by the hydraulic cylinder so I had to move it forward a couple more inches. The installation was further complicated by the boomkin, the stern cleat and the unique tiller arrangement. For the tiller end, I bought the below tiller bracket sold by Raymarine and clamped it to the stainless part of the tiller with two "U" bolts. The forward part of the black bracket is just visible on the lower right side of the pict just right of the tiller (which is folded up and is covered by the tiller cover) and just above the mizzen sheet cleat. To keep the unit horizontal, I mounted the base in a small diameter 2" high teak winch pad. This is visible in the picture just forward and slightly inboard of the forward end of the hydraulic cylinder. I actually had to mount this a little farther to the port (right in the pict) than it should be so that the post which comes out of the front of the hyd unit does not hit the autopilot. Overall, the installation works ok but is not perfect. It will sail the boat well in all but light winds (boat speed less than ~2 kts) and does good at all speeds under motor. Because of the location constraints I discussed above, the unit has less rudder deflection available when turning to port than to starboard. For this reason, I do not use the auto-tack feature to avoid "two-blocking" the unit. The installation under the tiller and aft of the mizzen makes the buttons a little hard to reach so I installed the wired remote. I also wired in my GPS so that the AP will drive to a waypoint. It took a fair amount of messing around with the settings to find a gain which gives me decent performance both motoring and sailing. When I set the gain at what was best for sailing, the unit oversteered badly when motoring at high throttle settings. When set best for motoring, it badly understeered when sailing. Lastly, I'll share that before I installed this unit, I took pictures of the boat to the Annapolis boat show and discussed it with the Raymarine representative. He recommended a hydraulic system because it would give me the best performance. I could not see the $1500 price tag.