Electric Steering on Small Boats

Article by Jerry Culik

A recent SCA on-line poll indicated that nearly half of those who responded are sailing solo; and another 42 percent might have a single crewmate when they venture out. As experienced solo sailors well know, there are many simple modifications, such as adding slugs to the mainsail and slab reefing, that contribute to sailing ease and safety. And I’ll suggest that a “tiller-lock” that lets you handle tasks away from the helm is a device that ought to be standard equipment, rather than an option, on any trailersailer. The traditional “tiller comb”—a gunwale-to-gunwale wooden rack to fix the tiller at several positions or the fancier slot-and-vane rig if the boat has an aft deck—is probably the simplest version. Many boats are equipped with the easy-to-install Davis Tiller-Tamer. But on my boat I constantly play with the tension knob, because just about any wind shift or powerboat wake can set the boat off course. I suppose that upgrading to a Wavefront TillerClutch, which costs twice as much, would make it a bit easier to adjust the heading. So while a tiller-comb or a commercial tiller-lock might be all you ever need if you stay close by the helm, I think that they are useful only for a short break, ready to make a change, while you keep a weather eye on the sails and the traffic.

Some frugal—and probably very patient—sailors have figured out how to use feedback from the mainsail sheet to handle helm duty and relieve the skipper for other tasks. Low friction hardware and steady, moderate winds seem to be the keys to getting a sheet-steering setup to work for sailing to windward. And while sheet-steering doesn’t require any complicated gear, the cockpit does end up crisscrossed with lines and bungee cords. In The Self Sufficient Sailor the Pardeys stress that a robust windvane steering system is critical for short-handed cruising, and they emphasized that a well-balanced boat—steering using “thumb and forefinger only”—is necessary before even considering it. That requirement certainly also applies to sheet-steering. Windvane steering is more complicated, more expensive, and even more sensitive to “boat balance,” but in return it’s able to handle more variable wind and wave conditions; and there’s much less hardware to clutter up the cockpit!

Although commercial windvane steering systems have been available for many years, none of them seem to be sized for small cruising boats. However, B&B Yacht Designs has plans for a slick windvane/auxiliary rudder that is specifically designed for and capable of reliably steering shallow-draft trailersailers and has been thoroughly tested and proven on expedition-type events such as the Everglades Challenge. Although windvane steering systems are mechanically complicated, and can be temperamental, their advantage is that they can steer both to windward and downwind without too much reconfiguring or hardware. However, one of the big limitations of both sheet-steering and windvane systems is that they need wind to work—therefore a windvane won’t steer while sailing downwind in a fast boat! And if the wind is flukey or it dies completely (...a typical summer day on my Chesapeake Bay), a different solution is needed.