Any owners of a 40/40 out there who have a newer AutoPilot? Wondering what you chose and whether you are happy with it? What issues you had installing it, etc?
Our old Robertson no longer works…
Thanks!
Going to follow this. My F40/40 came with an Authelm 6000. The drive works ok but the head/computer aren’t very consistent. I will probably add a newer autopilot and keep this as a back up. I must say on my last boat I installed a Raymarine Evo autopilot and it was quite good. I also sailed a Cal 40 from Hawaii to SF and that had an Alpha autopilot-the Gold standard anongst singlehanded and that thing drove an incredibly straight line.
I had a lighting strike in 2017 and replaced my RayMarine autopilot chartplotter and course-computer with a B&G system. My RayMarine system worked fine, once I installed a gyro into the course computer, but I have to say that the B&G system does a much better job of anticipating and correcting for things like following seas. That said, the B&G system is very complex and takes a lot of time to get set up and to understand what you’re looking at. This is not a weekend sailor system! If you’re headed off-shore, it’s a great system once you’ve learned how to use it. I’ll be glad to provide details on the system if someone is interested.
– Geoff
Hi Geoff,
could you elaborate on the installation of the B&G plotter? We’re considering replacing our original (?) Furuno plotter with the B&G Zeus3, which I believe has an autopilot control module as well. We already have newish B&G wind/depth instruments. I would hope they would all play nicely together, but before we take the plunge, it would be good to know what’s involved. Are there additional parts to buy, such as the NMEA2000 control module. We’d also like to add AIS eventually. Thanks for any info you, or anyone else, can provide!
I’m not exactly sure what you want to see, but here’s a network schematic of my installation:
Great schematic. Did you draw that in Visio?
I used a program called N2K Builder from Maertron, which allows you to design and verify your network design.
Nice. I will look for it.