Monitor Manual

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4 Sailing with the Monitor

4.2.5 Fine Tune for Optimum Course Holding

After you have engaged the vane gear, you should remain at the steering station for a while to check the self-steering performance. 

If the vane gear is constantly working to keep the boat from deviating to one side of the course, things will have to be improved. The same is true if the boat spends very little time on the desired heading and more time criss-crossing between generous margins on each side. 

You should obviously strive and expect to have the boat stay close to the course line. Deviations should be small, on BOTH sides of the course line, and quickly corrected by the vane gear. This can usually be achieved by fine trimming, which involves readjusting the sails and traveler and compensating with the main rudder. With a tiller you would move the chain a link or two. With a wheel you would disengage the clutch pin and move one or two holes before engaging the pin again. Minor adjustments on the course setting mechanism might also be necessary. 

Since fine-tuning is an important aspect of ultimate vane performance, it will also be treated in more depth in the following section. Here, we merely want to point out that if there is any remaining imbalance after the gear has been engaged,  you should always try to work it out by trimming sail FIRST and by adjusting the connection the boat’s rudder LAST. The objective of balancing should be to have as neutral a helm as possible. Basically try to steer the boat with sails alone. This ensures that the boat will remain balanced and steer itself over a wider range of conditions. Having the vane gear compensate for large imbalance limits its effectiveness.

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