Monitor Manual

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1 Welcome Aboard

1.1 Hints for Using This Manual

Important information and tips about your Monitor will be highlighted, and references to key parts are followed by a number, which refers to the official "Monitor Diagram and Part List" found on the separate fold-out, inserted in the pocket of the back cover of this Manual.

Welcome to the ranks of Monitor sailors. We hope you will be as satisfied with the Monitor as we are. The Monitor is built to give you years of excellent performance and to take the kind of punishment the sea sometimes delivers. Many yachtsmen are still unfamiliar with windvane self-steering gears. They view vane gears as oddities used by single-handed race heroes and circumnavigators. The truth is that a good vane gear, such as the Monitor, is a useful piece of equipment even on short passages of no more than an hour or so. Once the freedom of sailing with the Monitor has been experienced, this will be fully appreciated. In order to enjoy the experience of self-steering, the vane gear must, of course, work. Unfortunately, windvane self-steering is not a push button phenomenon. Knowing how to sail and how to balance your boat on different points of sail is necessary to get the most from the gear. Even experienced ocean racing sailors have confessed that vane sailing has taught them some things they did not know about balancing and trimming a boat. Windvane self-steering is an extension of sailing itself. This is no excuse for inferior performance. The Monitor is built with absolutely no corners cut and the greatest consideration for performance and durability. This extensive manual is necessary because windvane self-steering requires you to learn about it before you become a perfect operator. Proper installation and proper operation are essential, and we hope the number of pages in this manual will not keep you from reading it.

Hints for Using this Manual:

References to key parts are followed by a number, which refers to the official "Monitor Diagram and Part List". This is a separate fold-out, inserted in the pocket of the back cover of the printed version of this Manual. This Parts Diagram is printed on water and tear resistant paper. 

To see a boat being steered perfectly by a Monitor will amaze the most experienced sailors the first time. It might actually be a bit intimidating.

Next >> 2.1 Servo-pendulum Principle--How the Monitor Works