My 18 month old Raymarine ST2000+ tiller pilot ceased to work on my departure from Cherbourg to Alderney when the readout went blank, it also made a squealing noise and failed to operate. So we hand steered some of the way and let the Monitor Vane do the rest.  When opened up the ST2000 was very damp inside with corrosion on all parts including the circuit board. I spent an hour with it open, held under a hand drier in the gents loo and then brushed off the dry corroded powder from the electronics and slide arms and gear; carefully sprayed some moving parts with WD40 and others like the gears and worm drive with light oil being careful not to spray the electronics and rubber drive band; vaselined the case seal and put it back together. I also put a plug of grease up the fixing arm where it pivots and a smear of grease on the arm which goes out to the tiller to try and prevent further ingress. An hour later it 'fired up' as normal but it would have been annoying not to have had it at times for the rest of the trip.

I suppose I have taken to being a bit lazy about doing some things.

Still, now that it's out of warranty I suspect Raymarine will not be much interested in the problem but I will let them know my disappoitment and perhaps their  development guys will resolve things for their future customers.  I will keep you posted on any outcome.

I used to take my old one home each time and put it in the airing cupboard to air but was told by some ‘expert’ that it could dry out any lubrication inside. There was no evidence of any lubrication at all in my new one.(?)

Scotty

My 2 year old ST 1000+ has just failed (last weekend). It steers OK until the boat heels beyond about 20 degrees and then goes completely potty and makes the boat do a 360 degree turn, just what you need!

As I do a lot of short/single handed sailing, I carry two autopilots, the other being a Navico, both with completely seperate electrical supply circuits.

I spoke to Raymaine this week and they were very helpful, I just have to return it to them for repair - the big challenge today is to find a suitable box.

I strongly suggest you return yours for a service/check over this winter as I have read (somewhere - I think in their manual) that no grease/lubrication should be used on them as it can destroy the waterproof O-ring on the arm.

I have to say that I find the software/setup on the Raymarine products to be so obtuse as to be impossible to use ( or maybe I'm just thick). I remain to be convinced that any of these pilots are as good as the simpler earlier generation products, they seem over complex and not really as powerful. I had a good old Autohelm 800 that steered my boat beatifully even in a blow down wind, the modern ones, even though claimed to be more powerful, really struggle downwind as just do not react fast enough, and, periodically seem to get their knickers completely in a twist and just lose the plot and decide on a new heading all by themselves.

Sorry but what about fit for purpose-a tiller pilot with water inside?-surely it should be failsafe-gas filled or similar?!You are very lucky to have resurrected  it.

As for programming-must admit I have problems working out how to set up my Seatalk-particularly programming error into my log-and I have no problems with technology normally.

Phil

You are right, fit for purpose is something that doesn't seem to apply in the marine industry.

See my post re this radar reflector nonesense the MCA have come out with!

The MCA say we should (sson be must I expect) carry a reflector that meets the standard, and yet no one makes one that does, several claim to, but the MCA had a whole bunch tested and NONE met the standard, that coupled with white flares that cut you in half ( tiday I see bosuns chairs that break) it all leaves you feeling rather jaundiced and ripped-off!

Pergaps we were better off with oil lamps. cotton sails that lasted forever and wire you could splice youself!

Well I shall keep my 30 yr old Sharps autopilot now I have got it going for as long as it lasts-after all the analogue technology of the 1970s happily flew men to the moon!

Phil

Hi Phil/David

I have just sent back my ST2000+ and have mentioned the 'fit for purpose' to them as politely as I could.            Digging out the Invoice for it I find that it is just within the 2 years of warranty. 

I felt forced to open it up to sort it out. Having been an instrument engineer and having an electronics / computor boffin as crew, we were confident that what we were doing was for the best. We were at the time faced with the channel Isles and The Channel  without it and preferred to sensibly try and resurrect the thing there and then both for convenience and safety reasons. 

With electronics, damp is never a good thing at the best of times, but salt and damp for up to two years is usually terminal!

Why on earth do they not take a little more time and research,  and sort out their 'waterproof' seals so they work?   My thoughts are that David is wise to carry a '2nd string' on board, for solo trips especially, and Phil is right, if it aint broke etc.                  At the right times I get the Monitor to do the work as much as possible.

I will keep you informed as to the outcome.

Scotty

Just a thought-seal is probably perfect and thats the problem-if assembled in a hot humid environment then once sealed up you have created a micro-environment.When it gets cold it rains!-inside the box!

My old Homer Heron RDF receiver had a little container accessible from outside full of water absorbing crystals-when they changed colour you took it off and dried it out-problem solved.

Phil

RAYMARINE..  I'm impressed..I think!?

A week after sending Raymarine my revived ST2000+ I have received back a brand new replacement under its 2 year warranty, which has a week to go.

No note of explanation, no questions asked in response to my note enclosed which told Raymarine of my plight and actions to revive the original as/ my original posting above.  

Pleased,  yet confused,  I called Raymarine and talked to Paul Lawson from their Poduct Technical Support . He told me this morning that it was very rare to get a failure like this and it would possibly be caused by overloading or excessive use in harsh conditions. Thus causing a failure of the seals if the body should be distorted under extreme loads".   I asked Paul "what one should consider the life expectancy to be on my boat, a 28 foot long keeler of 4.5 ton (imperial) doing an average of 1200NM/year with a couple of Channel crossings and often getting a dowsing from a pooping in moderate seas."  It has also been installed as/instructions.  Paul was quite clear that "they were designed for this,  being a 'nautical instrument'  and mostly used on smaller boats which are basically wet boats"    I did ask if I should cover it over in any way and Paul thought "no, it was designed to be in the open".   Paul asked me if I relied on using the tiller pilot offshore and i told him I preferred to use the Monitor where possible.  He did not seem to like the idea of using the Monitor and tiller pilot together which i thought would take some of the stress and load off the Tiller pilot, but I don't know how one sets this up yet have seen video of it in use.    Any ideas?

Paul also made it clear that I would have an extra 6 months warranty on this new replacement.

Well, only being £19.50 worse off for the postage, and having a brand new ST2000+ to play with,  (even though my boat doesn't go back in 'til the end of March 2008 ), I think Raymarine have probably showered themselves in glory and show that they care with their customer support.   With this in mind I would probably buy Raymarine again if it was the last consideration for equipment of equal quality and similar cost. 

Thinking back, it was in the Raymarine fog tunnel at the last boat show in Docklands, that my wife and i entered at the last minute. The guy (seemingly of management) was closing down the stand but seeing our interest and yet being told we were at that time not to be customers, he was not put off. He welcomed us in and went to a great deal of effort and time to ensure we were shown as much as we were happy to see and could't have been more helpful.    Good products at a sensible price, with extremely helpful customer relations should I hope be the sort of package the Nautical world is looking for and expecting.

As to whether their Tiller pilots are 'fit for purpose' is still out for debate. 

How have you got on with your ST1000 David? 

My concern would remain the reliability issue-still think this could have been assembled initially in a high humidity-could have been done by a subcontractor of an electronics subcontractor of---.

As I remarked my old Homer Heron had a dehumidifier crystal chamber built into the back of the receiver to deal with this very problem-when crystals changed colour you removed them in their little container and dried them out.

Should you really have to carry two of everything just in case-thought we were beyond this?

Why I would hate to have a boat fitted with one of the modern car derived common rail computer controled engine-which is beginning to happen. Its bad enough having to have my car recovered 30 mls to the nearest agent but with a boat!!!!

Phil

Couldn't agree with you more about these Common Rail diesels, the last thing we need are components that you can't strip down analyse or check without specialist dealer only computer software.

I'm told that on the latest Ford Mondeo diesels, you can't even change the fuel filter without specialist electronically controlled bleeding devices!

Just what you need off-shore!

Hi David.

Did you get a good result with Raymarine over your ST1000?

Scotty

Still looking for a box! Iys the end of the season so no rush, but I'm glad you reminderd me!

Its now parked by the front door!

Hi

My experience with an Autohelm 2000 which struggled to last so I bought a Navico (Simrad) equivalent 18 months it falied to work so I took apart and found the drive from the motor was slipping I drilled and pinned it This was 10years ago It will now have to be replaced as the worm is wearing badly but my experience is that it is not so much the electronics that become faulty but the mechanical interface This is certainly the case in the N.Sea where I work on control equipment most electronics are fully sealed    

I used to carry two Autohelms on my Hurley 22 as they could never be fuly relied on  - and I had a succession of them over the years. The main problem was water ingress - but in addition some of the engineering was pretty feeble. The plug socket sealing gasket was far too thin and soon perished. Water was also able to work its way up the push rod, on the 800 model the drive cog was merely glued onto the drive shaft rather than being mechanically fixed. If you tried to take them apart at sea some of the components were not captive and were easily lost. A friend had similar problems with his units and when he complained at a boat show the representative said "Well how water proof do you want it to be Sir?" Strange that, as we thought "water proof" meant just that. In marine electronics industry terms it actually means just a degree of damp resistance for a limited period of time. Having said that I have always found the service support from Raymarine to be very good and the essential thing is to read the small print spec. which shows the recommended model for various types of sailing. If you buy the model at least two up from the "normal use" recommendation for your size of vessel then you have a reasonable chance of it coping with the odd bit of wet/ windy weather such as the summers of 2007 and 2008. 

Lastly, both my friend and I made water proof sleeves to fit over our units and once we fitted those we never had drowned units thereafter. 

In my notes above you will see how impressed I was with the Raymarine service. 

My replacement for the original new Raymarine ST2000+ tiller pilot has just died!  

This time with a splash from The Solent.      Fit for purpose or what?

I have sent it back to Raymarine and I am less than impressed!

Oh how I wish I had spent more and got the type with just the ram on the stern deck and the control pad in a dry position  

Watch this space.

Remain conviced that problem may well lie in these items being assembled by a sub contractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor in  hot humid conditions sealing in highly humid air which of course condenses when cooled.

I am no longer convinced of any quality control/quality assurance with any product-everything appears to be built to a minimum fit for purpose standard with no consideration as to need for reliability.

Believe strongly that we probably had best electronics in  days of the oirigional solid state technology which began to disappear by the late 1970s.

My Sharps hydraulic autopilot wont "put you to bed and tuck you up for the night" but is simple and keeps on going despite being 30.

Phil

Raymarines rep' Paul says the plastic lense to the readout was leaking so the ST2000 died as the result of a good splash.

They are putting it right and returning FOC. They are also suggesting that my Twister is too heavy for the ST2000 so it may be causing the body of the tiller pilot to become warped and so the seals are not keeping water out.  This overweight businessis stems from what I think is a very arbitary set of figures on their technical chart, and they say we should add 20% onto those figures for the loading of the boat..... not mentioned by their rep' Chris when I had problems last year.

At 4.5 tons it is a heavy 28footer but more important I thought,  was how well the yacht is balanced, so you don't end up with a heavy tiller eg. too much weather or lee helm.

Paul then started to ask how much did the tiller weigh and was it made of heavy wood????... yet I couldn't get him to think/talk sailing and the matter of loads and leverages or balance of the boat, so obviously not a sailor.

In difficult seas and on a longer trip I resort quickly to the Monitor anyway, so it would rarely get overworked.

They have also offered me a 'refurbished' ST4000 @ £450 with 6 months warrenty... what do you think?     Comments and advice welcomed...Scotty

Hi Scotty

We had an ST2000 for our Sigma 33, which also weighed about 4.5 tons. It had three motherboard replacements in its first two years, but then worked faultlessly for the remaining 14 years we had the boat. We only tended to use it on long motoring passages, however, which were obviously in flattish seas. In retrospect, it didn't cope too well with waves, which probably means it wasn't powerful enough. The 6001+ on the current boat is in a different league altogether. It sails the boat very competently in any weather, and can be relied upon to "hold the tiller" when we are pulling reefs etc. So it may well be that going up to a 4000 would be a good move. But I'd wait until the spring, now, so that you get a whole season's sailing out of the six month warranty!

ST2000 Bought  2006.  See 1st posting above....

October 2008 The Tiller Pilot starts to deviate suddenly to full thrust with no warning.

The fact that I was close alongside a big grey ship up from Portsmouth harbour, going about a knot, and having gone quickly below to the heads for a few seconds..... and turned to ram the ship is another matter! One of the problems when solo.

 I sent it back to Raymarine on Tuesday the 14th with a note explaining, and a copy of its history.Thursday 16th I get a call from the service department explaining that a new compass is probably required. This is fitted and the item is delivered back to me on the 17th Oct.F.O.C. Terrific service from Raymarine. Sad the item gives so many problems.

From what I can see there are 3 basic problems we are all encountering.

1) they are not waterproof

2) they get machanical problems, worn worm drives, belts breaking

3) they have electronic problems esp with compasses

 As the units  only do these three things above it rather tells us that they are really not fit for purpose.

I think I could design one that solves all of the above in a few minutes flat!

To solve item 1) take the electronics out of the tiller pilot, put it in a seperate box that lives down delow decks

2)beef up the mechanical drives, it wouldn't cost a penny more to make the worm drives and belt 50% bigger. The raw material costs are totally insignificant and the macining costs would be no more to make the components larger.

3) partly solved by 1) b but having taken mine apart it is clear that the gimbles need lubrication.

Perhaps we are living in a fools paradise as of course are the manufacturers, with an electonic/electo mechanical; device it is clear there needs to be a servicing regime, so Mr Raymarine & Mr Navico how about coming clean with us and publishing a service schedule and enabling us to buy replacement components rather than insisting we return the units to them.

Lets hope someone fron China or Japan reads all this and brings a proper unit to market, currently these units and pretty much all marine electronics with the exception of chart plotters and radars are about the same level of quality as UK made car electrics in the early 1970's - frankly quite hopeless!