Backup Self Steering
Most of the time we are sailing with just the two of us on long ocean passages and the thought of hand steering for multiple days if the autopilot fails reminds me of a getting a root canal 🙂 So we wanted some sort of backup self steering. I had a monitor windvane which was the primary self steering on Sudden Stops Necessary that I took across the pacific in 2011. I loved it so much I shipped it back to San Francisco and then to Amsterdam after selling the boat in Sydney. We considered installing one on Navasana but we thought it would ruin the look and more importantly wouldn’t work on all points of sail because of the high freeboard on a catamaran.
The other obvious option was to install a complete autopilot with a separate NMEA backbone for 100% redundancy but that would cost around 7,000 euros, which was a lot of money for something we may never use. The third option was to have redundancy for the parts that are most likely to fail. The drive and rudder sensor were the only parts that move and could wear, so these seemed like the obvious areas to have redundancy. My google search of autopilot issues validated this with majority of posts and videos citing the drive as the main culprit. Luckily this was also validated recently when Yachting world published their autopilot survey of 250 boats that crossed the atlantic including Navasana. “Drive unit problems made up 45% of the issues encountered – that’s 25 drive units across the fleet that were deemed unsatisfactory by over 250 transatlantic skippers. Just over 20% of problems were traced back to the course computer or the control unit, which leaves 30% (approximately) of problems in the ‘don’t know category’.”
Initially I had the drive and rudder sensor as spares but after seeing the drive bracket flex in big seas and the drive/quadrant bolt develop play I decided to install the drive and the rudder sensor on the starboard side for a total cost including the drive of around 2500 euros.
We installed a simple switch to connect the drive wires coming from the computer to the port or starboard drive.
The new drive on starboard which also has a ecopilot installed to reduce power consumption. This is now my primary drive with the original drive on port (without an ecopilot) as backup
I noticed that the steel bracket that the original drive sits on would flex when the drive was working hard so for the new drive we made a bracket from thicker steel.
I also installed backing plates and also retrofitted backing plates on the original drive on port.
Having sailed a couple thousand miles in the med I also noticed some play in the bolt that attaches the drive to the quadrant. So to reduce the play we added these steel disks on the bolts for both drives.
We also installed the spare rudder sensor on starboard however this doesn’t require a switch like the drive. Both rudder sensors can be connected to the NMEA backbone and then you can choose which one to use on the B&G chartplotter.
Here are the parts we installed on Starboard
| Drive and Rudder Sensor Part Numbers | Part No. | Qty |
| L&S Drive Complete Kit with Drive 2203086A and Powerpack 2203077E | 2203066 | 1 |
| L&S 2202047 Ecopilot 12 V | 2202047 | 1 |
| Rudder sensor Simrad RF25N | RF25N | 1 |
In addition I carry a drive service kit which can be used for either drive as well as a number of other spares for the drive and steering system
| Autopilot/Steering Spares | Part No. | Qty |
| L&S Drive Service Kit 40ST16 | 2202457 | 1 |
| Spare Goiot Steering Cable Sheave | 12122 | 1 |
| Spare bolt to attach drive to quadrant | 12981 | 1 |
| Hydraulic oil | Dextron III | 1L |
| 6m wire cable and cable clamps for steering cable jury rig | 1 |
So far we have crossed two oceans and done around 14,000 nautical miles with no autopilot issues. Fingers crossed it stays that way! 🙂