About to buy an auto pilot, am I missing something?

[johnnyandjebus]

Hello all

I am about to buy an auto pilot for my boat, a Contessa 26, 5400 lb's of displacement.
After reading reviews and comments here I am decided on a Simrad TP10 and will purchase it from Pride Marine, a locally based store for 449$
Simrad TP10 Tiller Pilot - Pride Marine - Ontario Canada

I have read up on the Raymarine products but have come to the conclusion that the Simrad is a better buy.

My main concern is that I not be too cheap on this purchase, my Dutch heritage screams at me every time I open my wallet and I have burned myself in the past by spending too little.

So am I missing something,
- Another companies product perhaps?
- A more powerful auto pilot?
- 449$ seems like a good price, If I could find it cheaper it would have to be noticeably cheaper to prevent me from buying locally, 449$ seems about right, correct? My research says it is a competitive price(cdn $'s)

I am not looking for any high tech features, just something that will allow me to spend less time with my hand on the tiller.

A final question, power drain? The specs say .5 amps. I only have a single battery in the bank with no means of charging it other than the engine. It is a marine deep cycle battery with 900 cranking amps. Any thoughts on this? I plan on installing a small solar panel(20-40 watts) as I have low power needs, currently just the VHF radio and running lights but until I do should I be concerned about battery drain? I am a day sailor, 6-7 hours out on the water at any one time.

All comments are welcome,
John

[tdw]

JandR, how often do you do those 6 - 7 hours ?

If only once a week then you should be just about OK.

When you say one battery, do you mean starter plus one house or starter/house same battery ? I must confess I always like to have a backup but I guess you engine shold be easy to hand start ?

[sawingknots]

i bought a raymarine st2000 for my py26[about 7000lbs]4 yrs ago and i think its the best money i ever spent in fact even though it still works very good and no problems i plan on buying another soon for backup purposes, i was a little concerned the st1000 might not be enough even though it was $100 bucks cheaper,i can't advise you on the simrad,as near as i can tell the battery draw is negligible,i also have a 2 bank battery system and usually a third for just in case

[johnnyandjebus]

Thanks for the replies

Originally Posted by tdw

JandR, how often do you do those 6 - 7 hours ?

If only once a week then you should be just about OK.

When you say one battery, do you mean starter plus one house or starter/house same battery ? I must confess I always like to have a backup but I guess you engine shold be easy to hand start ?

TD

I only have one battery on board, something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Generally my sailing consists of a 2-3 hour sail on a week night evening. A 4-7 hour sail on the weekend and if the weather is good a second weekend sail again 4-7 hours. I guess my concern, in the short term, is with what you alluded to. Having only one battery on board I do not want to drain it using the auto pilot. If need be, on an extended day sail I could always run the engine for 15-30 minutes while sailing to ensure my ablity to get home.

John

[delite]

We use a Raymarine ST2000 on a Catalina 27 but unlike sawingknots I do notice a fair amount of power being consumed by this in all but flat seas.

[beanctr56]

When I used a tiller pilot in the past I tried to only use it when I was motoring to save my batteries. It also worked best and was alot of help when motoring. R

[tdw]

Originally Posted by johnnyandjebus

Thanks for the replies



TD

I only have one battery on board, something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Generally my sailing consists of a 2-3 hour sail on a week night evening. A 4-7 hour sail on the weekend and if the weather is good a second weekend sail again 4-7 hours. I guess my concern, in the short term, is with what you alluded to. Having only one battery on board I do not want to drain it using the auto pilot. If need be, on an extended day sail I could always run the engine for 15-30 minutes while sailing to ensure my ablity to get home.

John

Yep, definitely needs addressing although as I mentioned I presume your engine is simple to hand start ? Depending of course on size of battery I'd think you'd be fine for your short sail but probably good insurance to give the battery a charge mid point of the long. I'd reckon more like 30 min than 15.

You could of course also rig up a voltage metre. I confess since we installed one on Raven (as part of solar panel installation) I have found it extremely useful.

As for your choice of equipment we have a TP30 as back up pilot on the new boat (it connects to the Hydrovane) and a mate of ours with same design as Raven (vds34) uses one (TP20) as his primary. TP10/20/30 are essentially identical except for the grunt. We took his boat on an overnighter up the coast from Sydney last year and the Pilot behaved faultlessly though a little noisy if you are trying to have a kip in the quarter cabin.

[johnnyandjebus]

TDW

In theory the engine can be hand started, it is a farymann diesel K34. In practice I have never been able to hand start it due to a lack of a de-comp lever. Because of this and my single battery bank I have had a very healthy paranoia around running my battery down.

At this point my thinking is to get the auto pilot, a 15-20 watt panel and run the engine as required to keep the battery topped up.


Thanks all for the feedback,
John

[tdw]

Originally Posted by johnnyandjebus

TDW

In theory the engine can be hand started, it is a farymann diesel K34. In practice I have never been able to hand start it due to a lack of a de-comp lever. Because of this and my single battery bank I have had a very healthy paranoia around running my battery down.

At this point my thinking is to get the auto pilot, a 15-20 watt panel and run the engine as required to keep the battery topped up.


Thanks all for the feedback,
John

Hang on, I thought any diesel had to have a decompression lever. How else do you stop the thing ?

Anywho ... 20w panel will keep the battery topped up while you are away and half an hour every three hours or so should keep your TP running sweetly and enough grunt to start the donk.

[BarryL]

Originally Posted by tdw

Hang on, I thought any diesel had to have a decompression lever. How else do you stop the thing ?

The decompression lever is not used to stop the engine. On my engine (Universal M25) the stop lever shuts down the air supply.

Barry