Albin 25 auto pilot

[Fredstraw1]

Hello all. I am considering putting hydraulic helm steering in my 25 Albin and was wondering if anyone has done the same. I want to install an autopilot as well.

[WillieC]

We have managed to travel from the bottom of Hood Canal to the end of Toba Inlet plus hundreds, (thousands?) more miles in our ten years of ownership without autopilot. I admit the Starfleet Commander does most of the driving when the driving is nice. I get standing wave and small craft advisory duty.

I think considering that much of our steering is adversely affected by wakes from other boats, I am not sure that investment in an autopilot is worthwhile. Now a free one is another matter entirely. I like the idea of setting a course and going, we do have plenty of straight water to traverse, but the bungee cord method works wonders for me.

Have you exhausted spending all you can on improving your boat otherwise? I am in the process of replacing the shredded lock strip on all my windows, a free project thanks to another generous AOGer. I spent 15 bux on yet another tool which has taken almost the entire duration of the project to learn how to use.

If you are single-handing, the installation of an autopilot rises significantly. Fortunately for me, the SC loves driving the boat. I have also added audible engine alarms for oil pressure and exhaust temp so I am not constantly looking over her shoulder as I stand watch from the comfort of my horizontal lookout station.

Don't forget the added power consumption an autopilot consumes, from what I hear. Surely you could spend a few more boat bux on upgrading your electrical system.

It sounds like you may be coming from a bigger boat. Hydraulic steering sounds wonderful and there is wisdom in attending to the old gear all these A25s have. Tribologist will no doubt weigh in here with the importance of maintaining those old cables. Yet another of my winter projects that should make it to the top of the list.

There are plenty of us who have installed or inherited AP on their 25s. Most are the old style belt and suspenders on the steering wheel. I am curious how many have found the room to install hydraulic steering.

[Fredstraw1]

I do think the room required for a hyd steering cyl in the space for the rudder would be challenging which is why i thought i would ask to see if any had been installed by other owners. I am at the early stage of my albin restoration project. This will be my retirement boat and i will be sailing/fishing solo at times so the AP would be a huge asset. As for other projects to spend $ on...they will be endless! I am starting with a rebuild of the engine and gear and then move to installation of shore power, fabrication/installation of an aluminum wheelhouse, head upgrade, a dickinson diesel stove (bristol) and i need to find a trailer to put it all onto. With the exception of the engine rebuild I will be doing all the work with my son/partner. Oh and then there will be electronics...yikes lol! We bought the boat with a pretty much finished interior and the hull is in great shape but other than that she is pretty bare. We are picking up where the previous owner left off. For us, building her up to where we want it is half the fun...we enjoy it very much. I am hoping to have her in the water next summer and complete the project in 2yrs...ish.

[Ambler27FC]

I have an A27 and the hydraulic steering /autopilot that was installed by a PO, so I have no practical advice. But I would say that the hydraulic steering and auto-pilot is among my favorite systems on the boat. If you were doing long stretches on a heading in bigger waters it can be a real winner. It is most appreciated for following seas, but also great to step back and watch the wildlife or clean-up lines. The rudder position sensor required is very useful for docking too.

Mine is a simple Raymarine system with just a heading-hold. It has been flawless over 5 seasons. Small footprint, no maintenance, and works in all waves and wakes you might walk away from the helm for. With the AP and all core electronics going I draw 3.3A on average. It jumps to 6A with the fridge - the main draw. Both electrical loads seem reasonable for a typical house-battery and alternator.

[Fredstraw1]

Hello Ambler, your system sounds ideal for my application. My last vessel was a westcoast troller with the old wagner AP and i loved it. Was simple and bombproof. I am not looking to navigate with it, i just need it to maintain the current heading I have chosen. Thanks for the input!

[WillieC]

Ambler's description of a working AP sounds very good, but I am glad I have acquired the skills to handle the boat in the various conditions we encounter. The first time we had serious following seas, I learned very quickly that it wouldn't take much to turn sideways and swamp the boat. Sounds like an AP can handle those conditions which would be very interesting to see. On fairly calm waters, the bungee cord method I use is quite limited in the fact that any motion on the boat changes the heading. I anticipate that movement and skew the wheel when I want to move about the boat. I can never leave the pilot house for more than a few seconds. I have also dozed off, no bungee, at our normal 6 knots, only to awaken heading straight to shore. AP may have let me sleep a little longer. That's when the Starfleet Commander takes over.

All that said, I have nearly been run over multiple times by boats that I can only assume are under AP with no watch standers. I can understand how it happens and do not want to join that cohort. Somebody always is required to stand watch. Fred, you have the right idea. Let us know how you make it work in an A25.

[Ambler27FC]

I think the footprint of my hydraulic actuator is less than 1’ x 1’ when you account for the cables coming off of it w/o kinks. Not sure how that fits into an A25 though.

My system is good for at least 2-3’ of following seas. Maybe more, but at a certain point I mentally need to be in control.

No disrespect to Mr. WillieC in the above. Wheel time is magic time and there are many conditions where you will navigate each and every wave. His solution sounds ideal, but the Starfleet Commander might consider reaching over the shoulder and testing the horn to correct any dozing off.

Some modern AP’s navigate though multiple waypoints which seems lazy and dangerous to me. My surveyor told me about a person that ran into a bridge in Annapolis when the steel in the bridge confused the magnetic sensor driving the AP. But if you know that area you wouldn’t take your hands off the wheel within 5 miles of this bridge. He also spoke of boats hitting 8’ tall channel markers in daylight. It is the people - not the system.

[SalishAire]

Sounds like we have the most experience with autopilots so I will try to pass some of it on. Our first long trip was 1000 NM in a MacGregor 26X from Vancouver BC to Skagway Alaska. We got a lot of advice about what we did and didn't need and could and couldn't do but only one person we talked to had actually made the run. His advice was that radar "was nice" (it was as we hit some really thick fog banks) but an autopilot was mandatory as the miles and miles of straight runs can get really old when you are running 8 - 12 hours a day (that far north you can almost go 24 hours and still have daylight). The advice was accepted and we mounted a Wheel Pilot (I don't know if they are still available or not) and ran it off an early Garmin GPS that we had to set the waypoints in manually after carefully reading them from paper charts the night before. We were REALLLY glad we had it!. I know that we had an auto pilot on our next boat (a Rosborough 245 (25 ft)) but I can't remember what it was. Next we moved aboard the Nordhavn 46, Salish Aire, which came with a commercial grade autopilot with ALL of the bells and whistles. We put 15000 NM on that boat before we moved off, almost all of them using the autopilot (try to imagine a crew of 2 manually steering a boat on the open ocean for 6 days non-stop). I used to say the autopilot drove the boat (except in confined waters) while we monitored the systems. We did learn to monitor it closely when a software glitch (since repaired by Navionics after we were the first to find it) caused an uncommanded 180 degree turn (luckily just before we entered a narrow channel) in Alaskan waters..... Now on to the Albin 25 which came with an older belt driven Autohelm auto pilot (and a spare!). Initially we thought it would get swapped out in short order but our current rule is "live with what you have for a year before changing anything you don't need to". We have found it to work well in this setting! It could be interfaced with our GPS chartplotter but it would be a challenge as its native interface is an older Raymarine proprietary version of NMEA 0183 so we have been using it for straight line runs using the internal electronic compass and at this time have no plans to change. SUMMARY: We believe you will use and enjoy a boat much more with an autopilot but on a small boat like the A25 which requires you be near the wheel at all times anyway a minimal system is quite adequate.

[realslimshady]

I fitted an autohelm system to mine as I am 99% of the time single handed- it means I can aim up the lake and then go and stow fenders/coil ropes/ roll back the canopy/collect beer (whilst monitoring the situation) and relax.....
And when I was in the UK, trudging along the solent at 6 knots, the same.

[tribologist]

Our A25 came with an old Raytheon Sport pilot. I got that working with the GPS but it drove me nuts in that it needed confirmation for each waypoint. One turn might be 10 waypoints... very annoying. Raymarine still have that idiot function mandatory. I would NEVER buy a Raymarine AP due to that. We have been upgraded it in steps. First I got a NAC-1 and a Point 1 AP GPS. Definitely an upgrade over the old Raytheon AP. I used the drive motor from the Raytheon unit in a similar way that Octopus do but without clutch. Just ripped the electronics out of it and ran the wires to the motor output of the NAC. The Raytheon Sport pilot has a very nice overide clutch that allow you to steer through the autopilot and if you do for more than a few seconds it kicks out in rudder following error but it allow you to do a 1/2-3/4 fling on the wheel and cross a wake without taking it off AP. Really like that function and I think you can get similar function with hydraulics. Next I upgraded to a NAC-2 to get me better ability to tune it and two years ago I upgraded to a HS-60 GPS compass after the Point 1 AP started to drift and did not hold calibration. (it was a $25 cut cable unit from ebay) . I did about 1000 miles this last summer and I might have hand steered an hours or so the whole summer. Basically when docking or locking. If I meet someone I click on the button to put it in heading hold, two click to turn 20 deg, turn back 20 then go back to NAV after the meeting vessel passed. I typically se cross track errors of a few ft. Might go up in 25 ft in a sharp turn but typically the autorouting tend to cut corners and the AP tent to hold out a little. Now and then it try to run over Nav aids but thats handled with a quick flick on the wheel without even disengaging it. If someone stole it form the boat I would be a Defender the next day replacing it even if I had to pay full price. It is probably the most valued thing on the boat. It is so incredibly relaxing just not having to worry about steering all the time. Sometimes we do 10-12 hour runs. I would never do it without AP.

[tribologist]

Now on to the Albin 25 which came with an older belt driven Autohelm auto pilot (and a spare!). Initially we thought it would get swapped out in short order but our current rule is "live with what you have for a year before changing anything you don't need to". We have found it to work well in this setting! It could be interfaced with our GPS chartplotter but it would be a challenge as its native interface is an older Raymarine proprietary version of NMEA 0183 so we have been using it for straight line runs using the internal electronic compass and at this time have no plans to change. SUMMARY: We believe you will use and enjoy a boat much more with an autopilot but on a small boat like the A25 which requires you be near the wheel at all times anyway a minimal system is quite adequate.

I bet the drive you have there would work just fine with a modern AP unit and get out of the NMEA 0148 limitations. I just ripped out the electronics out of my old Sport pilot and connected it to the motor drive output of the NAC-1, then I added a home brewed rudder sensor (5kOhm Potentiometer) and a $25 cut cord GPS compass.

[glk34]

We have a King autopilot on iron jack. Very reliable but old. If it stopped working tomorrow I would replace it. Money well spent.

Chris

[LopezMike]

Some thoughts . . .

Having used autopilots and tiller minders and the like for more years than I care to think of, there are some thoughts I might pass on.

I have not found that navigating from one waypoint to the next makes for a very rewarding cruising experience. There have always been too many interesting things to go look at to be able to predict my route in advance. And once you have diverted from your planned route over the ground, it is fraught with possibilities to simply head for the next waypoint once you have looked at an interesting headland or floating object. What was hopefully a safe path over the bottom may well not be now. There are less exciting ways to verify the chart than banging into rocks.

At the risk of asking whether your mother sucks eggs, I ask that you always keep in mind that the autopilot has no idea whether you are still on board. Even with two or more people on board, it only takes a minute or two to be left far enough behind to be extremely difficult to spot. Does everyone on board have your skills in assuming a reciprocal course much less even disconnecting the Iron Mike without getting quite disoriented.

All that said, Caprice (Albin 25) has a nice new belt drive unit with all sorts of whistles and bells few of which I've read about much less used. For me it's a course keeper and I feel muchly abused if I need travel over a few hundred feet without it. A high percentage of the time it does much better job than I do. Certainly after a few hours.

Although each person has their own considerations when choosing a design, I rejected any pilot with parts that would be hard to get to quickly. The thought of moving all the stuff in my aft cabin to see why the boat was going in circles gave me pause. I make too many mistakes and cruise far too close to the rocks to be comfortable with any steering gear that I cannot disconnect in less than a second. The Exon Valdez went on the rocks because the watch keeper couldn't disconnect the autopilot.

Selah

[DesertAlbin736]

Nine years into A25 cruising I've not missed being without an auto pilot or auto helm. We had a tiller pilot on our last sailboat, a tiller steered Catalina 25 wing keel that we owned from 2008 to 2013. That came in handy on a harbor hop run from San Diego to San Pedro, out to Catalina Island & back in 2012, two years before we switched to La Dolce Vita. But that was in an open cockpit, not a cozy sheltered wheelhouse.
La Dolce Vita actually came with a Raymarine tiller pilot with wired remote & connection to an old school simple GPS. It hooked to a removable stub tiller that clipped to the rudder head under the aft cabin cushion board. I found it wasn't particularly good at holding course & the 2000 vintage GPS had a hard time getting signal reception. So I pretty much removed & abandoned it. I've spent so much on various other projects on this boat already I'm not anxious on spending more "B.O.A.T" on something I get along very well without. An electric anchor windlass would be a higher priority.