OK we just crossed the Atlantic and are relaxing in St. Maarten, well actually we are trying to get our
diesel repaired, LOL. Some of you have either purchased or were thinking of
purchasing a CPT
wheel pilot. We purchased one as back up if our larger, more powerful
Raymarine electric/hydraulic ever gave up the ghost.
The
Raymarine was flawless however it drank goobs of amps so we needed to run the
engine to top off the
batteries even though we had a decent
solar setup and when our
engine started to give us trouble we started to really cutback on our
electrical use. All of a sudden our back up
autopilot was asked to carry the full load which it did without missing a beat for 80% of the trip.
There is a bit of a
learning curve on setting up the sensitivity but once I had it dialed in it looked after things without an issue.
I am really impressed with this new model and it was able to handle the
boat under
spinnaker or white
sails and in light winds to winds in the 30
knot plus range. I thought it might want to jump cogs in the belt when the going got a little rough but there was none of that. It used less
steering impute than our larger model yet held a very good course, maybe not quite as good as the larger one but totally adequate for the job and better than most helmsmen. If you are looking for a good powerful
wheel pilot that has no problems
steering a 42 footer across the Atlantic for days on end then take a good look at the CPT, it really is good
gear. R