Anything good or bad about seakeeper gyros?

[longjohnsilver]

Good for them (and even better for you!), seems that stab firms gennerally give better than expected service. That's certainly my experience of Trac and in particular Golden Arrow Marine who replaced a major piece of malfunctioning gubbins in the control panel when it failed long after the warranty period had expired. And all done very quickly and at no cost to myself.

[mikef]

Good for them (and even better for you!), seems that stab firms gennerally give better than expected service. That's certainly my experience of Trac and in particular Golden Arrow Marine who replaced a major piece of malfunctioning gubbins in the control panel when it failed long after the warranty period had expired. And all done very quickly and at no cost to myself.

I can't believe what I'm reading here, ljs! An old sea dog like you needing the comfort of stabilizers? Are you going soft in your dotage

[longjohnsilver]

I can't believe what I'm reading here, ljs! An old sea dog like you needing the comfort of stabilizers? Are you going soft in your dotage

Well that may be true but I still haven't worked out how to turn them on.........

[Nick_H]

I’ve resurrected this old thread rather than start a new one as some of the previous posts are relevant.

We had the sea trial of the gyro yesterday, and broadly speaking I’m delighted with it. The winds in Antibes were very light, but there was a 0.5-1m swell running, which is similar to the swell you can sometimes find in the local anchorages from a distant storm or a passing superyacht, so the results should be fairly indicative.

This vid shows the gyro working



The video linked below shows the boat rolling in a beam swell. At approx. 15 secs the gyro is engaged, and it takes about 5 secs to start working, so you can see the full effect from 20 secs. We had some bigger, steeper, swells come through later (off camera), which had the boat rolling fairly violently, and when the gyro was engaged the roll almost stopped, so i'm really impressed with the performance. I think it’ll make life at anchor much more comfortable, and let us stay out when we may previously have headed home.



We had similar results cruising at displacement speed, which opens up a whole new type of cruising to us. I couldn’t test it at planning speed as the props were too fouled to plane.

Noise doesn’t seem too much of an issue on the 8000 series gyro (It runs 20% slower, but has better controls, so still has 15% more torque). With the lazarette hatch shut I couldn't hear the gyro over the noise of our (relatively quiet) generator, and that’s before I fit any kind of acoustic box. The noise during wind down could be more intrusive once the genny is switched off, especially as the gyro takes 4-5 hours to stop after turning it off, and at some stages of the wind down the noise becomes cyclical, which makes it more noticeable than a constant noise. Hopefully the acoustic box will block that. Another good thing about the new 8000 model is that it doesn’t need cooling during the wind down, you can just switch it all off together, although Seakeeper suggest that it’s good practice to stop the gyro as you enter port, but allow the cooling pump to run until you’re tied up on your berth.

The installation has been done nicely, and when the box is fitted over the gyro I’ll still have reasonable storage in the laz, and in some ways better storage as I wont need to climb down the ladder to get anything. The installer had to steal a bit of room from the crew cabin, but it doesn’t really affect its useability.

So all in all, as I say, I’m really pleased with the results, and also very happy with the service from Seakeeper. They’ve kept in touch during the shipping and installation, and not to forget they sent me a brand spanking new gyro rather than delay sending the re-furb. You can’t ask for more than that!

[DTIM]

Very interesting Nick, I was watching like a hawk at 15-20seconds to see if I could notice the difference - need not have watched that closely - the difference when turned on was very obvious. Great result. Has the weight altered the trim at all?

[wakeup]

Looks very effective even more so from 28 seconds in.

I now realise that the gyro rotates about a single axis. I had assumed it would be gimballed in several directions to eliminate any change in attitude but it is really the side to side you want to eliminate more than anything.

[jfm]

Very nice stuff. The second video where you switch it on at 15 seconds is pretty convincing - I'm pleased that the result is that good

It will be interesting to hear later how it performs underway in a rolly sea

Good news on the noise front too

I had the benefit of seeing this machine in the flesh last Saturday on board Nick's boat and it looked a really neat installation and a beautiful piece of kit

[jfm]

Looks very effective even more so from 28 seconds in.

I now realise that the gyro rotates about a single axis. I had assumed it would be gimballed in several directions to eliminate any change in attitude but it is really the side to side you want to eliminate more than anything.

Yup, they are all like that wakeup. It spins abut a vertical axis, and gimballs about an athwartships axis, and so it applies an anti-roll twisting torque to the hull about the boat's fore-aft axis only. It woudn't have enough torque to make any difference to the boat's pitching, so it might as well be made as it is

The clever electronics control the hydraulic cylinders which control the precession, and that's how it makes sure the right torque is being applied to the boat's hull to get the best effect. Clever stuff, and way better than the Mitsubishi stabiliers on Ferrettis which do not have this feature. It looked the dog's doofers installed on Nick's boat when I had a look at

[wakeup]

Yup, they are all like that wakeup. It spins abut a vertical axis, and gimballs about an athwartships axis, and so it applies an anti-roll twisting torque to the hull about the boat's fore-aft axis only. It woudn't have enough torque to make any difference to the boat's pitching, so it might as well be made as it is

Really, I believe you, however I would have thought that it had a greater moment re the fore aft distance to cog than the moment athwart ships and therefore more influence fore and aft. More mass moving up and down to counter though I suppose.

[kashurst]

that looks very impressive - let us know how the boat goes at displacement speeds.