How the CapeHorn Self-Steering Was Born
By Yves Gélinas
I became hooked on cruising under sail in my early twenties, when boats were wood, sails cotton and running rigging manila or sisal . However, I never enjoyed being stuck at the helm for long periods and wondered if it could be possible to make a sailboat steer itself. In 1967, I purchased a 24’ fibreglass sloop and the following year, went into action: with the help of a friend who had learnt welding at the School of Fine Arts, I built a gear from scraps of pipes found in the local blacksmith’s shop. It was inspired by the solution Blondie Hasler used in 1960 in the first Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race: a paddle at the stern driven by a vertical vane; when it pivots vertically, the water flow makes it tilt sideways, generating the energy to pull the rudder. I made my fist single-handed passage, 150 miles between Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
In July 1973 I became skipper of an Alberg 30 I named Jean-du-Sud, after a song by Gilles Vigneault, a poet as important in the French world as Bob Dylan in the English. It was steered with a wheel, so gear #2 was an auxiliary rudder driven by a horizontal vane. It steered me to the West Indies and in the following years, did 3 return trips between there and the East Coast, one trans-Atlantic passage to Brittany, then to Sweden.
Leaving Sweden in the fall of 1978, I was penniless and had no idea where I would land. A letter from a friend, Michel Chabiland, caught up with me in Germany, offering me a job in his boatyard in Brittany. I had met him the previous year and we quickly became fast friends. He ran a yard near St. Malo, on the Rance River where Jean-du-Sud spent the winter. In the spring, he generously placed at my disposal the resources of his yard to refit Jean-du-Sud before I sailed to Sweden. During a stopover in this beautiful anchorage of the Channel Islands, the Isles of Chausey, the last before reaching St. Malo and getting to work, a crazy dream I secretly had for some time suddenly appeared possible: I was offered the facility to prepare Jean-du-Sud for a single-handed voyage through the Southern Ocean, non-stop.
On my return from Sweden, I formed the project of a non-stop single-handed circumnavigation via the Three Capes and the Southern Ocean.
Whoever sailed that route had self-steering problems. Having already built two, I was confident I could design something totally dependable and more elegant than what already existed. Actually, this had never left my mind; I had started experimenting in 1975, during a summer spent on Martha’s Vineyard Island. Over a period of 5 years, I estimate that I have put in the equivalent of one year full-time. If my solution is better, it may not be because I am more gifted, but because I worked at it longer.
Whoever sailed that route had self-steering problems. Having already built two, I was confident I could design something totally dependable and more elegant than what already existed. Actually, this had never left my mind; I had started experimenting in 1975, during a summer spent on Martha’s Vineyard Island. Over a period of 5 years, I estimate that I have put in the equivalent of one year full-time. If my solution is better, it may not be because I am more gifted, but because I worked at it longer.
I had found the Hasler solution used in #1, that steered through the rudder of the boat, more efficient. Performance was better in light air, especially downwind, a lighter impulse being needed to move a narrow paddle than the auxiliary rudder of #2, that also caused more drag.
But instead of vertical, the servo-pendulum of gear #3 would be driven by the vane invented by French engineer Marcel Gianoli for Eric Tabarly in the 1968 OSTAR: an angle of about fifteen degrees from horizontal provides a greater movement than a vertical vane, yet still proportional to the course deviation.
Gear #3 would be an integral part of the boat, not just an addition bolted to its stern. Regardless of the strength of the wind or the state of the sea, I should not have to worry about its resistance or performance. It would be discreet and would not deface my Alberg 30, a work of art in itself. Throughout the design period, I had this constant preoccupation: simplify; eliminate useless metal. Advantages: less weight, simpler operation and cheaper fabrication.
To install wheel steering, you have to punch a hole through the cockpit sole. To integrate gear #3 to the boat, I did not hesitate to drill a hole through the transom for a horizontal tube. Inside, another tube transmits the tilt of the servo-pendulum at its aft end, to a control arm at its forward end, inside the lazarette. I can’t imagine a simpler or more robust installation. Lines coming from the control arm pull the tiller; if steering is wheel, they are led through blocks bolted to the quadrant in the lazarette, then to jamming cleats in the cockpit for instant connect, disconnect or trim.
But I kept stumbling on this problem: how to transform the vertical movement of a connecting rod coming from the vane, to the rotary movement of a paddle that cancel out as it tilts laterally, so that the correction remains proportional to the course variation and avoids yaw. Existing systems use gears, heavy and expensive to manufacture, or plastic rods and joints, lighter but more fragile.
Gear #3 offers a double integration: part of it is hidden inside the lazarette and it is connected internally to the boat’s steering system; it also integrates both steering modes, wind and electric: when the wind is absent or unstable, the vane is replaced with a small tiller pilot inside the lazarette, connected to the forward end of the rod through the coaxial control rod. The paddle still provides the power to move the rudder so the smallest autopilot can steer any size boat with only a few milliamps of power.
The yard in Brittany built small aluminium dinghies for sailing schools and I was able to build a prototype out of aluminium tubes. After a few tests and corrections, gear #3 worked to my satisfaction. But aluminium would not be strong enough to survive in the Roaring Forties, so I had it reproduced in stainless steel in a nearby shop.
After three years of preparation – two working on the boat and the self-steering gear, one to raise the money to purchase new sails, provisioning and all the equipment required for a 9 month voyage – I was able to leave Saint-Malo September 1, 1980.
My plan was to link Saint-Malo, in Brittany, to Gaspé, in Québec, but the other way around the world. I sailed down the Atlantic, rounded Good Hope crossed the Indian ocean, rounded cape Leeuwin, but I was capsized and dismasted in the Southern Pacific.
I knew I could never afford a new mast and did not send it to the bottom, as is usually done in such predicament; I hoisted the two sections on deck and reached the Chatham Islands, 600 miles east of New Zealand. Under jury rig, #3 was still steering!
I was back at the Chatham Islands October 23, 1982. After two months to splice the mast and refit, I left in the first days of the austral summer. I crossed the Pacific, rounded Cape Horn, sailed up the Atlantic. May 9, 1983 having covered 28 000 miles, Jean-du-Sud sailed into Gaspé bay wing on wing without a pole on the genoa, a feat deemed impossible to any self-steering gear! In 282 days, I never had to steer by hand. This made me conclude that my third self-steering gear could steer other boats than mine.
