Paul Heiney

The magic of the wind vane goes beyond just holding a steady course; it becomes a companion and therapist on a long passage. It is something that no electric autopilot can ever rival

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Hands up everyone in the room who has an electric autopilot. A sea of waving palms appears before and they love it to bits if they are constantly sprayed with salt water, and love life even more the windier it is. Perhaps it’s down to aesthetics. I knew a chap who wouldn’t have one for all the tea in China; he said me. Autopilots are as common he ‘wasn’t going to have scaffolding on boats these days as baked hanging of the back of my boat!’ beans used to be. They are, The way the world is going, he without doubt, useful little may have to change his mind. If critters, and so common that politics doesn’t seriously disrupt the there are some amongst us precious metal trade, it’s quite likely who wouldn’t even consider a that nature will. Have you heard of trip from Hamble to Poole if lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, the little buzzing box wasn’t in samarium, europium? No, neither working order. The cruising have I but everything from mobile population now divides into phones to satellites is stuffed two camps; those with electric with them All these unheard-of self steering, and those who are precious metals that make modern about to get it - with apologies life tick are in ever shorter supply, to that couple at the back of the and the world hunger for ever room who have turned up in sou’westers and tarred canvas smocks ‘Practical matters apart, more fiendish electronic systems will surely trump any requests and have never heard of them. The trouble is, they go wrong. there’s pleasure in a wind for a bag or two of neodymium from the autopilot makers.

And quite often. It’s not that they’re vane that feels lacking in Practical matters apart, there’s badly designed or built, but that we ask too much of them. If you other systems’ pleasure in a wind vane that feels lacking in other systems, are finding it hard work to hang on and it’s no coincidence that most to the wheel or tiller as the rolling sea attacks you from owners give them a nickname, as if they were friends, bow or stern, what makes you think your autopilot is although I never have. My favourite pastime, on a fine going to find it any easier? Too much responsibility and day, is to grab a mug of tea, settle myself down on the poor thing has a nervous breakdown, which is when we stern, and simply watch it doing it’s magic. I’ve owned curse, put on our grumpy face, and lash ourselves merrily pretty much all the major models over the years, and to the wheel for the last fifteen hours before home. I all are fascinating. On some you can watch the strings competed in the solo transatlantic race some years back; swinging to and for in time with the passing waves; forty five of us crossed the start line, and only fifteen others have a mechanical linkage which is beyond my of us made it to the finish. Of those who dropped out, understanding, but nevertheless riveting. I could no more than half were because of autopilot failure, some more go the sea without one hanging around behind with high-spec devices too. Make of that what you will. me, than I could without....and here I am struggling But mine didn’t fail because I never used it. I might to think of something more important and I can’t. press its big red button for a minute or two while I Windvanes are not just for ocean work. I wouldn’t reefed, but I never asked more of it than that. And if use one in the Solent on a Sunday afternoon, but just that sounds smug, that was exactly how I felt every time the job for a quick dash to Cherbourg or across Lyme

I glanced at my wind-driven, mechanical self steering, Bay. Once you’re the master of it, it’s just a quick to set hanging off the back of the boat, never complaining, it as pressing that big red button. On my return from always keeping me on the straight and narrow. You can the south Atlantic, I was asked how long I had spent be best friends with a wind vane and like the ‘four-legged behind the steering wheel. I think the chap asking the - friend’ in that old song - it will never let you down. question imagined that I grimly clung to it beneath the I don’t know why there aren’t more of them. They’re not baking heat of the sun for days on end like the Ancient cheap, but neither is a decent electric gizmo these days. On Mariner. I answered, ‘About twenty minutes. Ten leaving the plus side they require no battery, have no USB sockets, harbour and ten arriving.’ He didn’t believe me.

ILLUSTRATION CLAIRE WOOD