Autopilot

[Lostsailor13]

Yesterday the weather was sunny,50 degrees And calm seas,perfect test day for autopilot,did 25 miles with autopilot on most of the time,worked flawlessly,and this time of year with no lobster pots,was able to just let it run,not used to not being at helm 100% of the time,and was a nice change,gotta add raymarine smart controller for flybridge,then will start building maretron system next

 

[boomerang]

Why are you going with a smart controller as opposed to a control head? To me, there's nothing wrong with a remote control but only in addition to a fixed-mount control. My reasoning is that ,if in auto and the remotes battery dies or the remote fails, the pilot remains in auto and doesn't revert to standby, causing you to scurry down to the other station to regain manual steering. I know this because this happened to us last year coming north. I put the Raymarine S100 remote control down on the dash while in auto and the bump killed the battery connection. I was on the waterway but thankfully not in too close quarters so it wasn't a huge deal but it was a lesson learned. As soon as we got home, I changed out the whole pilot and added a full function station to each helm. I did wire the S-100 remote back into the system but honestly, it's more of a novelty & we rarely use it.

 

[Lostsailor13]

Well the smart controller comes with 2 mountable holders and 2 cables for charging,I’ll mount one holder at the upper helm along with charging dock,so really not to worried,and plus I’ll be able to adjust heading in cockpit while trolling as well,you should have spent the extra 150 bucks and got the smart controller instead