I am evaluating autopilots for my CnC Landfall 48 sailboat, and the
Simrad has a feature not found in other pilots, which they call
WindNav - the ability to steer the boat to an angle of wind with an
eye towards a destination waypoint. The Simrad will allow you to tack
upwind and will suggest the tack point for the final lay line.

My belief is that navigation / pilots should provide functionality
which allows me to increase the amount of time my eyes are on the
water, and this feature strikes me as a good idea. However, none of
the other pilots I'm looking at offer this feature, nor, as best I can
tell, do any of the pc navigation software products nor integrated
chartplotters.

This begs the question: how useful is this feature?

I'd love to hear from people who have a Simrad installed on a
sailboat, and whether or not anyone uses this feature...

Thanks,

Keith

On Thu, 1 May 2008 09:59:50 -0700 (PDT), cognisense
wrote:

I am evaluating autopilots for my CnC Landfall 48 sailboat, and the
Simrad has a feature not found in other pilots, which they call
WindNav - the ability to steer the boat to an angle of wind with an
eye towards a destination waypoint. The Simrad will allow you to tack
upwind and will suggest the tack point for the final lay line.

My belief is that navigation / pilots should provide functionality
which allows me to increase the amount of time my eyes are on the
water, and this feature strikes me as a good idea. However, none of
the other pilots I'm looking at offer this feature, nor, as best I can
tell, do any of the pc navigation software products nor integrated
chartplotters.

This begs the question: how useful is this feature?

I'd love to hear from people who have a Simrad installed on a
sailboat, and whether or not anyone uses this feature...

Thanks,

Keith

Raymarine (and their predecessor AutoHelm) pilots will steer by
apparent wind, provided you have an apparent wind indicator on the
SeaTalk network.

It's a long time since I switched from sail to power, so I don't
recall how well, this feature worked, as I usually preferred to steer
myself if there was enough wind to sail. The autopilot was primarily
used while motoring.

--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
GPS and NMEA info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter
Vancouver Power Squadron: http://vancouver.powersquadron.ca

cognisense wrote:
I am evaluating autopilots for my CnC Landfall 48 sailboat, and the
Simrad has a feature not found in other pilots, which they call
WindNav - the ability to steer the boat to an angle of wind with an
eye towards a destination waypoint. The Simrad will allow you to tack
upwind and will suggest the tack point for the final lay line.

My belief is that navigation / pilots should provide functionality
which allows me to increase the amount of time my eyes are on the
water, and this feature strikes me as a good idea. However, none of
the other pilots I'm looking at offer this feature, nor, as best I can
tell, do any of the pc navigation software products nor integrated
chartplotters.

This begs the question: how useful is this feature?

I'd love to hear from people who have a Simrad installed on a
sailboat, and whether or not anyone uses this feature...

Thanks,

Keith

I have a nav. program written in GWBasic which does the same thing. A
simple, easy-to-use program which allows inputs for course to windward mark,
tide, wind direction, pointing ability, leeway. etc., etc. but it is pretty
time-consuming to enter all the required data.

I have only use it once whilst racing, and in view of the ever-changing
parameters, found it less than useful.


Dennis.

Raymarine (and their predecessor AutoHelm) pilots will steer by
apparent wind,

Yes, the 3 pilots that I'm currently evaluating all steer to apparent
wind. In this, they all function similar to simply sailing to a given
magnetic heading. Instead of selecting your magnetic heading, they
simply allow you to sail to a specified degree of wind off the bow.

The Simrad, however, allows one more layer above the steer to wind
mode - in that it also keeps track of the windward waypoint.

Anyone with specific experience with this feature???

Keith

cognisense wrote in news:0b14f7b6-0ec8-4d34-bcb5-
:

Raymarine (and their predecessor AutoHelm) pilots will steer by
apparent wind,

Yes, the 3 pilots that I'm currently evaluating all steer to apparent
wind. In this, they all function similar to simply sailing to a given
magnetic heading. Instead of selecting your magnetic heading, they
simply allow you to sail to a specified degree of wind off the bow.



B and G "Network" PILOT can steer to apparent wind from "Network" WIND
instrument data in the NMEA 0183 data stream jumpered from unit to unit.
PILOT even stores it's WIND response and "learns" to steer it better.

If you set PILOT to steer off the NMEA network, however, and let The
Cap'n do the steering from the laptop computer, it will keep an eye on
waypoints AND apparent wind that PILOT alone will not do.