Yachting and Boating World forums: Hydrovane Installation ... experience, pictures, customer service

Thought others might like to hear of our experience installing our Hydrovane. We bought at Southampton Boat Show and the unit was delivered (as requested) in January in extremely impressive packaging (5 wooden ended boxes).

Installation took one day when the boat was out of the water (after having spent several days studying the installation guides etc).

Before we began I had shaped two pieces of teak to fit the brackets so they would butt up to the transom. As the transom is quite flat the lower bracket (which is hinged) had a 1" piece and the top bracket (which is at a fixed angle and would therefore need a wedge shaped piece of teak) had a 2" piece cut.

The lower bracket was installed first. The slight curve in the transom was matched to the teak using a sanding disk on a grinder to hollow out the teak in the centre. Once this was bolted loosely in place we put the shaft in to align the top bracket:

(Note: We had to remove the boarding ladder as to mount the unit centrally although we would clear the ladder the port mounting hole fell exactly behind the ladder rail!)

The top bracket was then aligned the top teak pad was cut to fit. This was done my roughly measuring the angle we required and then planing the teak with an electric planer to the angle and offering up to fit until we got it right. We then hollowed out a slight curve again to suit the transom profile:

We then checked vertical alignment side to side looking from behind the boat and lining the shaft up with the rudder before drilling the holes for the top bracket.

Once these were drilled we fine tuned the length of the top tube to get a vertical fore-aft alignment.

We then removed both brackets and put sealant between the bracket and teak, the teak and transom, and the transom and backing pads on the inside. (The backing pads were made of 1" marine ply - we also had 3mm thick stainless washers on the inside).

We then refitted the bottom bracket and bolted it up - and then the top bracket and bolted it up.

Shaft re-inserted we then dropped the drive unit on the top and put the vane on - looks good:

.

However, the vane was too tall to allow it to swing through its full range when on a beam reach without hitting the gantry. We took some pictures and emailed Hydrovane in Canada on Monday morning. They replied at roughly 1am on Tuesday (UK time) with some more questions - the choice was a shorter vane or a shorter shaft. I suggested a call to discuss and at 6pm on Tuesday (UK time) Will from Canada called to discuss the options. The shorter shaft looked like a better option as it would make the installation stronger (less distance between the top bracket and drive unit). Will called their UK workshop on Tuesday evening and a new shaft was shipped on Wednesday morning which arrived on Thursday morning (today) with us.

We fitted the new shaft today:

(Note the drive unit is 10 inches closer to the top bracket - it is vertical - the mast in the background is raked which makes the shaft look angled!)

Looks good and with the vane on (forgot to take a picture) it misses the gantry by 1/8 inch! (Although we could drop the shaft another inch to get more clearance if we wanted to).

Hoping to get her launched this weekend for testing next week.

It wasn't an easy job to do (was very glad to have the father-in-law expert woodworker on hand to do the teak pads) - and took around 8 hours in total (plus a further 1 hour to change the shaft tonight). We were extremely impressed with the customer service from Hydrovane and the speed with which the shaft was exchanged (we are posting the longer shaft back to them next week) especially given the time difference between us and Canada we had to overcome.

I will report back in due course how it steers (reportedly very well!) but am impressed with the build quality and customer service. Not a cheap piece of kit - but looks like it will be well worth it so far!!!

Jonny

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