Vinny started out in a box. Actually four boxes. Cardboard too, but built to take the punishment that UPS dishes out for being shipped from the UK to Hampton, Virginia.

Vinny is also known as a wind-actuated auto-steering rudder pilot mechanism. “Huh? Ok, so now please rephrase in non-sailor jargon?”

A device that will steer our fair Fayaway without electricity or a human. Vinny steers the boat with his own rudder, so if Fayaway has a rudder-fatality accident or all power fails, Vinny will take care of the three of us. Just have some wind, set the direction and away we go!

Some background:

Our recent passage from Newburyport to Annapolis offered spirited downwind, broad reach sailing, thoroughly testing our new “ish” Garmin electronic drive unit. Far offshore, on the heels of Hurricane Ian, ten foot following seas on the stern quarter would stress any steering system, including the person gripping the wheel for many hours: aka manually steering. Egads. Our newish electronic autopilot was complaining… a lot! No, it didn’t completely quit nor do any Crazy Ivans, but thoroughly (audibly) complained about working too hard without being offered a break throughout the worst of the boisterous weather conditions.

Fayaway carries two electronic autopilot drive assemblies - a newer primary unit, and an older spare stowed below. Both are powerful hydraulic/linear drive units sized appropriately for the displacement of our vessel. Why do we have two? Why do we want a third level (Hydrovane) of redundancy? Read the prior paragraph again, and think about being on a two-week long offshore passage with two persons, and decide what would happen if the autopilot broke.

deja vous – We made a similar decision back in October’19 prior to heading offshore from Virginia. To truncate the story here, this isn’t our first rodeo with installing a wind vane: We received our first Vinny I while in Hampton, but decided against starting the installation beforehand. We ended up doing the install at a concrete quay in St George’s, Bermuda, then with good results. We employed Vinny I whenever offshore thereafter, and with no complaints or failures.

Combined prior experience made our decision easier, to spend a ridiculous amount of dwindling boat bucks on another new Hydrovane self-steering unit.

In early October I contacted Hydrovane to start the discussion. Long email threads with Will at Hydrovane, where he repeatedly insisted that oddities of our boat will allow proper functioning: Large solar panels overhead? “shouldn’t be an issue. Offset due to stern ladder won’t be a problem.” Sent more photos and sketches. Always the response: “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

Parts were to be delivered to us at the Annapolis Boat Show, about a week after ordering. They didn’t make it, and were forwarded to a UPS store in Hampton, Virginia, our designated place for performing the installation. However, some of the parts were wrong. A factory snafu was responsible for sending more wrong parts. At each stage of seemingly questionable shipments or installation, I would contact Will and Richard to plead my concerns.

Throughout the straining process, we gratefully received installation assistance from our own volunteer crew, Pat. He spent hours helping to fit the odd assembly, and never complained when I mistakenly cut the bolts too short!

Precious time diminished, departure weather windows came and went. Pat lost patience and departed on another vessel. Eventually, we completed the installation, and made a hasty departure eastbound from Cape Charles.

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Here we are, a year and many thousands of miles later. In summary, we had several installation complications, initially involving shipping errors borne by Hydrovane. Lesson #1 learned: don’t trust that you’ll receive what you ordered, nor when it was promised. Hydrovane has accepted some responsibility, and has offered credit for future purchases.

My initial impressions of steering performance have remained unchanged: regardless of Hydrovane’s insistence to the contrary, by offsetting the unit, combined with our canoe stern, the hydrodynamics simply are suboptimal and thereby steering performance is clearly compromised.

Additionally, the starboard solar panel did interfere at certain wind angles, essentially and significantly diminishing the Hydrovane’s usefulness. To remedy the panel conflict, we replaced the starboard panel with a shorter one. But the offset is something that must wait for another time. Stay tuned while we reconfigure, and then complete some offshore miles.