We just finished crossing the southern end of the Sea of Cortez from La Paz to Mazatlan, MX. The sea conditions for the last half of the trip were deplorable: large swells, very close together with the occasional even-larger swell. All hitting us either directly un the beam or just aft of the beam. NOT the type of duty my Simrad TP-32 autopilot signed on for. Fortunately, last month in La Paz I had rerigged the lines on my Cape Horn windvane and studied up on how the darn thing works. First day out, I set it up and it steered beautifully. The day I set it up, the winds were light (5-7 knots) and coming from the port quarter. Later in the trip, the winds had piped up to (estimating) 10-15 and were still coming from the quarter. Later, a slight course change put us dead downwind. The Cape Horn steered beautifully through it all. When we were approaching Mazatlan and I finally relieved him of his duties and took over hand-steering, I found out just what a tough job he had. It was real work to keep on course!
Since the Toucana model that was designed for the W32 is built to mount on a boomkin and Siempre Sabado (W28) has no boomkin, I have the Varuna model. Just for the record.
Now that I have the unit up and running, I really wish I'd worked harder on getting it operational before we left the US. That first night out of Newport, OR, when our autopilot wouldn't work, would have been a lot nicer if we hadn't had to hand-steer. From now on, if there's any wind and it's direction is pretty steady, the Simrad is going to be my back-up system, NOT my primary one.
