Aside from being the boss of UK Jeanneau importer Sea Ventures, Nigel Colley is also an active shorthanded racing sailor on his Sun Fast 3200 R2 Fastrak XI and director of racing at the Solo Offshore Racing Club. This growing breed of shorthanded racers are highly reliant on the accuracy of the systems onboard and the ability of those systems to drive the autopilot with maximum efficiency. Fastrak has twin rudders and a
single pilot ram is connected to the rudder link bar along with a rudder reference unit. This is the same set-up that went around the world on several boats (including Hugo Boss) in the recent Vendée Globe, albeit the much more powerful Imoca 60s have an additional ram hooked up as a reserve. In addition to the displays (more
later), Fastrak XI has twin B&G H5000 pilot controllers. These feature smaller monochrome screens and more physical controls, buttons for Standby and Auto,
60 SEAHORSE
steering left or right in 1° or 10° increments plus Mode and Menu. The pilot has five modes:
Heading (to a compass course), Wind (steering to true or apparent wind), Nodrift (keeps the boat on a fixed bearing, but compensating for drift), Navigation (steering to a waypoint) and Non Follow-Up where the autopilot is simply used for push-button steering. What is most impressive about
the H5000 Pilot is its secondary enhancements such as gust response and heel compensation (courtesy of the motion sensor). So if the boat is sailing downwind and heels, the pilot automatically knows to bear away to keep the boat sailing flat. Likewise, if the pilot senses a wind speed increase. Nigel Colley is impressed: ‘When
I’m racing solo the pilot is helming probably as much as 90 per cent of the time, upwind and downwind, and I’m just trimming the boat, sleeping, cooking and so on. I’ve been amazed a few times when I’ve
Above: Colley leaves the helm to the autopilot on his much -travelled Jeanneau 3200 while he accesses his Zeus3
system
via the water resistant touchscreen to manage everything from basic navigation to laylines and wind shift trends to monitoring approaching traffic on the integral AIS
gone for the helm expecting the worst and actually by the time I get there the pilot’s sorted it all out. With the motion sensor and the true wind speed response detecting when the boat’s hit by a gust, bearing off and then bringing the boat back up after the gust has gone through, it’s scary.’ In fact, this system continues to learn, detecting the rudder response and helm balance. As with most aspects of H5000,
there are default settings, but how the autopilot reacts is highly programmable and is tailored to the quirks of a boat. Fortunately, most processes, as well as calibration at set-up stage, are made easier by being able to carry them out on a laptop, via a webserver page generated directly from the H5000 processor. This is also where more of the H5000’s functionality can be gained, getting displays not only to show a variety of information, but to switch continually between information; or this can be
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