Monitor Manual
4 Sailing with the Monitor
4.3 Your First Sail With the Monitor
If you have never sailed with a vane gear before, you should find the following hints especially helpful during your first trial.
Choose a day with decent breeze, if possible (10–15 knots or so). Trying out the vane gear with too much or too little wind will complicate your observation of what the vane is doing.
Do not over canvas. If your boat can be sailed well on a jib alone, you should set a jib only – at least for starters. Not dealing with sheets, potentially gibing booms, and a boat rushing onward with her lee rail under, will help you concentrate on the vane gear and how to make it work on all points of sail. Also, you will put off the problem of balancing the boat for self-steering until you are familiar with the working and operation of the MONITOR.
Start by sailing upwind without really pinching. Turn the leading edge of the airvane into the wind to bring the airvane upright and engage the pendulum lines on your tiller or wheel. The leading edge is the edge on the same side as the black counterweight. Make sure that the airvane is not mounted backwards. See 2.2.
Let the boat settle down with the self-steering controlling it. Even if the boat is not going exactly where you intend, give it a couple of minutes to assume a steady heading. Go aft and observe the way the airvane moves and how this movement sends the pendulum swinging and the boat’s own rudder turning.
Move the airvane setting slightly to form a smaller angle between the longitudinal direction of the boat and the leading edge of the windvane. Observe how the boat is taken closer to the wind. Once again, give the boat and the control system time to settle down. Retrim your sail sheet, if necessary.
Adjust the course again. When you are satisfied that the boat is sailing well on the new course for a while, change the airvane setting again by opening the angle to make the boat go further away from the wind. As the vane makes the boat bear off, retrim your jib sheet and let the boat settle down on the new course.
Go through all points of sail in a similar fashion.
Always allow the boat and the vane gear to settle down after you have made a change. The most common mistake is changing too many things too fast which prevents you from understanding what is happening and why. You will notice that the pendulum will only go two-thirds of the way towards the outside leg of the frame when the airvane is all the way down for maximum correction. Do not be alarmed. The gear set is designed to do this to avoid over steering. Full swing to the side will only be seen in strong wind conditions with higher speed.
Next >> 4.4 Balancing for Self-Steering