Teach Your Autopilot To Be Your Best Crewmember

Rupert Holmes looks at how to set up your pilot so it will steer better than you can

- Rupert Holmes

Installing a decent autopilot makes a huge contribution to comfort when cruising and passage making. Yet for many of us the idea of being able to rely heavily on a pilot in testing conditions remains a distant utopia. However, the basic technology that enables pilots to steer accurately in challenging situations has been reasonably affordable for more than 15 years. Equally, if your boat has an older and lower-spec system there’s often much that can be done to improve its performance.

The short-handed offshore racing community has been at the forefront of pushing development and understanding in this area for many years. We drive our boats extremely hard, often sailing 3-5,000 miles each season, and therefore discover issues that may not otherwise come to light.

There are plenty of examples of very successful skippers who use their pilots almost all the time, irrespective of wind strength, wind angle, or sea state. Among them is Pierrick Penven, whose well-travelled Jeanneau Sun Fast 3200 Zephyrin has an enviable track record. This includes victory in the solo division of the 4,000-mile Transquadra race from St Nazaire to Martinique, which he followed with three months of family cruising in the Caribbean. He also won both legs of the 2019 Azores and Back race, well ahead of even the best double-handed boats on corrected time.

After the AZAB Penven told me he had used the pilot, ‘99.9 per cent of the time.’ This included blasting downwind at speeds above 15 knots in 40 knot gusts in the newly formed Storm Miguel that wreaked havoc on the Atlantic coast of France a couple of days later. Yet Penven said he only took the helm during the race ‘to have a break and a bit of fun.’ Yet his French NKE pilot, while good by the standards of many, is by no means the latest generation system.