Sailtimer wind vane & rotating mast...

[BOAT]

In response to 1st sail, I did see a guy on the posts here (I think he was in Queensland??) And he had two sets of spreaders on his M. The second set was way up high on the mast pretty close to the top and I think he had a clipper rig too. I suppose if you had spreaders way up high like that skipper from Queensland, (or was it New Zealand? Australia?? Blimey! I'm a Limey who don't know the land under the Southern Cross!) How embarrassing. After I have been here on this blog site for a awhile I will start to remember everyone by name. I'm still kinda new.

Anyways I think his upper spreaders would be a fine place to put a wind sensor contraption of some kind. His upper yoke stayed put while the mast rotated so you could mount something on his upper yoke to get a wind reading?

[Lieu Daze]

1st Sail...believe we're on the same page. Tee plate mounted on a bearing looking something like this:


Then rigged to the end of the spreaders...you could also tie the front of the plate to the upper shroud bracket, (instead of the spreader yoke lower down). I have an extra bracket about 18" farther up for a spinnaker halyard that one could tie to as well. Rigged like this the plate should stay straight? Maybe even tie all 3 points to the upper bracket? Unfortunately the boat's shrink wrapped or I'd go mess around.

[Kevin4637]

This bracket idea looks good to me. Has anyone built and tested one?

[1st Sail]

Lieu Daze,
Your design is exactly what I had in mind. I think we should add a swept back mini spreader at the upper shroud hound. The ends of the mini spreaders tie to your stays as pictured. I think this would cancel any tendency of the stays to rotate or shift horizontally due to the friction between the plate and mast. The mini spreader would intersect the plate stays approx 1/3 below the mast head and therefor fix / stabilize the lower 2/3 of the stays to a permanent position like the mast spreaders. We should be able to trailer this with out any assembly required.
As soon as I can locate the info for posting pics I will upload my illustration.

[Lieu Daze]

1st Sail...sounds good, see what you've got going.

As an update also I have been working with the manufacturer and they are working on installing a rotation compensation feature into the app.

They wan't to know approximately how much rotation the mast actually does each way. Like I say my boat's in staorage until April but I guessed about 45 degrees or so? From experience I would say when lubed and working properly it snaps over to about 45 and stays close to the same over mosts points of sail.

I think once you played with it a bit you could make it pretty functional...it would save installing the extar hardware as well.

JR

[1st Sail]

Lieu Daze,
There was a post several years ago where one of the members positioned a potentiometer on top of the mast plate bearing post at the foot of the mast. It was a great solution. IIRC it required dual ST60 systems with a processor on the NEMA 2000 network circuit plus some software to interpret the NEMA sentences. I will see if I can find it in the mods and repost. In short it sensed the mast rotation angle +/- in relation to the fixed position of the mast plate with 0 being the center axis of the boat. I'm sure a good EE could eliminate our mechanical solution.

[BOAT]

What about a magnet sensor thing on the front of the boat to tell the wind vane which way front is? (I guess that's another electrical engineer thing , right?)

[Lieu Daze]

Hey 1st Sail...have seen the potentiometer solutions but like we've said, quite expensive. If you were to put together a full system with traditional equipment you'll be forking out close to 10% of the value of the whole boat. Unless you were racing or doing long distance cruising it's a chunk.
Good news on the wireless system though...been corresponding and brainstorming with the manufacturer and looks like they are configuring a new wireless, solar model that will have accurate compensation for mast rotation built in. They dropped the manual calibration idea and claim a precise "mount and forget" unit ready in a couple of months at the same cost, (under $700).
Believe the new unit uses a separate GPS than your boats and calculates the difference. Keep you posted.

JR

[1st Sail]

Lieu Daze,
That would be a deal maker @$700. The only reasonable one I could find was the Tack Tick mast sensor http://www.defender.com/category.jsp?pa ... id=2028835 + another $1400-1500 for display and windvane. Raymarine bought TackTick and I don't see there base entry unit the T033 listed anywhere. You were still looking at $600-700 for the T033 + $700 for the sensor.
I was thinking a mechanical solution would be the only thing I could afford. SailTimer web site lists $689 US with NMEA interface. Awsome. If they have a mast rotation sensor I'm in.
Thanks for keeping me posted. Snow tomorrow.... Time to get out the buffer and start waxing for spring.

[mastreb]

Lieu Daze,
That would be a deal maker @$700. The only reasonable one I could find was the Tack Tick mast sensor http://www.defender.com/category.jsp?pa ... id=2028835 + another $1400-1500 for display and windvane. Raymarine bought TackTick and I don't see there base entry unit the T033 listed anywhere. You were still looking at $600-700 for the T033 + $700 for the sensor.
I was thinking a mechanical solution would be the only thing I could afford. SailTimer web site lists $689 US with NMEA interface. Awsome. If they have a mast rotation sensor I'm in.
Thanks for keeping me posted. Snow tomorrow.... Time to get out the buffer and start waxing for spring.

A simple rudder position sensor attached to the mast will report its position. The trick is configuring your chartplotter to subtract the mast position from the wind.

[u12fly]

...A simple rudder position sensor attached to the mast will report its position. The trick is configuring your chartplotter to subtract the mast position from the wind.

A rudder position sensor might work, but even if you could find some way to get the data to your GPS and have the software do the math work, mounting the sensor and getting it aligned every time you rig the boat for sail may be a difficult challenge.

Here is new Powersailor Discussion with a solution:

http://www.macgregorsailors.com/forum/v ... 22#p258622

Chris.

[pmmcderm]

I have an with an adjustable backstay option installed by Arean Yachts. Anyone try to put a NMEA windvane on the backstay plate? It appears to stay aligned fairly well with the boat when the mast rotates, and I was thinking that if I mounted a one to that plate, I wouldn't need to make a lot of other mods.

[1st Sail]

pmmcderm,
there is a good diagram earlier in the post which would work great with the mast bearing and back stay. Definitely would save you a bundle.