Location | Description | Operation | NonCalibration | Steering | Advanced | Summary
Despite long standing promises, it has taken us a while to actually get one of the 3 of these talking compasses owned by BAADS installed on a boat. At last there is one installed, connected, calibrated and operating on Endless Time (E.T.). The reasons for the delay in getting this necessary work done are many, but have a lot to do with difficulties in finding a way to install the compasses on our particular boats in a way which conforms with the technical needs of the device, and is both out of the way when not required, and more or less usable to those who need it. Anybody who's technically inclined and wants to know just how complicated such a thing can get may call me and I'll go over it a bit with you, or better yet, let's go for a nice long summer afternoon sail and we'll see the real installation and use the thing.
The need:As a blind sailor, I have found that being at the helm is one of the more difficult things to learn. I love hopping around the boats pulling on lines, trimming sails, grinding winches, and both setting up the boats and putting them away.
In steering the boats, especially when off the wind where apparent wind is light and often blocked by the shadow of the sails, it is as yet very difficult for me to find information which can help me keep a course. The sun, if out, is likely to get shadowed by a cloud, by the sails, or by who knows what else, and so is only sometimes helpful in steering. As I said the wind is hard to feel, and often because of the wind being blocked at my head level by various things like the boat, the actual direction of the apparent wind is not reflected in the wind I feel. Sighted sailors have a huge variety of cues to work with, the set of the sails, taking bearings on chosen steering marks on land, and so on. I don't have those. So I need a way of keeping a course. The most obvious instrument for that purpose is the magnetic compass as used by sailors for hundreds of years.
Many "Tactile" modified compasses are around in the field of adaptive equipment, but generally these require to be level, and need to be handled with both hands while being read. Also they don't have the accuracy or resolution to hold a course within much better than 45 degrees, or maybe 22.5 degrees with a little tactile interpretation -- won't do while steering a boat on the Bay, will it. The obvious way is to use modern electronic compass technology, most often what's called a "flux gate compass". Then take the electrical information made available by that sensor and with the aid of a small computer, make it talk. Luckily Autohelm, the maker of autopilots and other marine instruments and equipment, did this in Britain.
This Autohelm unit is very well done and, with a few limitations, does what it needs to do quite nicely. To find it, look on the cockpit's starboard forward bulkhead, right ahead of where you'd sit at the helm on the starboard side. You'll find at the top left of this panel, a round plastic "Access port". These things are usually used as more or less openable hatches for places you don't need to get too often. I looked all over for something with a hinged lid that's waterproof to do this job, but there just isn't anything available that would fit the needs. So it's a slight pain. This round plastic port is opened by sticking your thumb and finger in the two holes, or depressions just inside the circle of the actual lid, the central part of the 8-inch circle that comes out. Unscrew the lid by twisting counterclockwise about two turns. The lid comes out allowing you a 6-inch diameter round hole into the insides of the boat. Please keep track of this lid. You might want to put it back in place if things get wet on a particular sail: this lid is the only watertight seal at this point, and we'd like to keep the insides of the boat, especially the instrument/wiring box back of the lid, dry as much as possible.
Just in back of this hole, you'll find the 7-inch high by 9-inch wide molded plastic box which is the compass. One of the reasons it's mounted that way, one of many, is that the compass wants to be mounted vertically so that its internal sensor, even though gimballed, can have the maximum freedom to keep itself level when the boat rolls and pitches. Another reason is to keep it out of the way when you want to sit there and lean against the cockpit side for support while steering.
The compass, (finally!). The compass itself is, as I said, a molded plastic box about 7 by 9 inches. It has 7 controls, 6 big rubber pushbuttons in 2 rows of 3 high, like a braille cell on growth hormones, and a small knob to the right. The knob is a volume control, but it's a switch having 6 positions, the most counter clockwise position is softest, and the most clockwise is loudest, as expected.
The speaker for the compass, unlike the original manufacturer's unit, is a large one, which is mounted in the side of the cockpit wall, just in back of the shins of the poor slob who's sitting behind you when you are working the compass. This speaker was originally put in to connect to the old VHF radio, but is no longer required for the new radio which swings out for use from the position of the old depth sounder. (Neat what?).
Turning it on: The compass is powered from the auxiliary electrical panel located in the front of the little instrumentation box on the port side of the cabin, just around the corner from the main electrical panel where you start the engine. This new panel, installed and designed by David Conely, and Dave Izant, does 2 things. First, to the right of the hinge, it carries the circuit breakers for the AC service which operates when the boat is docked to keep the batteries charged and provide power to the AC outlets around the boat, very useful when working aboard. Second, left of the hinge, this panel allows us the freedom to properly install all kinds of overly fancy electrical gizmos to the heart's content of any gimmick nerd and have a goodly number of separately switched and fused circuits for each. Neat going David and Dave, and beautifully designed too!
To the left of the hinge there are two vertical columns of toggle switches and their accompanying fuses on this panel, and on the column closer to the hinge, the second switch from the bottom powers the compass. Note the switch above the compass switch (3rd from the bottom) powers the electric tiller motor for the joy stick system. Eventually it'll also power the autopilot when we get that tangled web set up.
When you want to use the audible compass, after the battery is turned on with the master battery switch, flip this toggle towards the port side of the boat and listen for the speaker to thump as the electronics in the compass does its thing. Now go back and press the bottom left of the six big rubber buttons on the compass. If things are working, and if you've got the volume set appropriately for your current noise environment, you should hear a "BBC" like digitized voice announce the current compass course in a wonderfully clear, if a bit too slow, British accent. This is the simplest way to use the unit, but only if all you want to know is where the boat is pointing.
An important note here: we have calibrated the audible compass to match the visual magnetic compass on the port bulkhead of the cockpit. That way you won't get into arguments when your talking compass disagrees with the one your sighted crew is reading. These two compasses have not! repeat NOT! yet been "Swung" or made to have the deviation errors always present in any compass on any boat removed or calibrated out. Thus you can not! trust the actual readings of either compass to be very close to magnetic headings. Don't chart a course to follow in the fog or when coasting south around a point of land and expect that following either compass's reading will get you accurate dead reckoning. We'll get the compasses "Swung" as soon as we can, and then re-calibrate the talking compass to reality. For now, you can quite happily use them to follow a course set by other means than by expecting the magnetic readings to mean anything.
So you want to steer a course across the Bay while your sighted skipper/crew goes below for a drink or just takes a break to watch the birds. First, of course you can't watch for traffic so have your crew look darned carefully for it and be sure, that is you be sure by trusting your carefully chosen crew, that you've got plenty of clear time to do what ever needs doing.
You could steer as best you can and keep pushing that left button and hearing the course you think you want or not depending on your steering ability. If you're lucky it's within 30 degrees of where you wanted to be. That's no way to do it, so press the bottom right button on the compass. It'll say "auto" followed by the course it's now steering. So have your crew set you up on your desired course by visual or whatever non-magnetic means, and then hit the bottom right button. Now, if you wander too far off to port of your course, the compass will start making beeps at you, a lowish beep whose speed of beep increases the farther off course you get to port. So swing her back around and listen to the beeps slow down and stop when you're within 5 degrees of your course. Now of course, you haven't stopped the turn quite right, so as you get off course to starboard, the compass will start beeping at you again, this time with a higher pitched beep whose beep rate increases as you wander off to starboard. So swing her back to port, and so on. After a while you'll be able, depending on conditions and practice, a lot of practice, to keep her head within 10 degrees or so of course. Usually plenty good enough for a long haul. It is almost impossible for anyone I know to keep the compass silent, which means you've not deviated more than 5 degrees or so off your desired course. Even my captain Sue, (Wife) who is a pretty darned hot helmsperson, gets a beep or two now and then if there are any waves or changes in wind at all, and she has all that neat visual stuff to go by too. So don't get down in the dumps if you can't keep the thing from beeping and beeping at you, high, low, high low, and once in a while you'll get way off course as a wave bangs you around or you start talking and miss a wind shift.
By the way, If you no longer want to use the "Auto" mode of the compass, pressing the bottom left button gets it back into "Manual" (labeled "Standby") mode and stops that confounded beeping. If you're not going to use it for a period of time, it's probably better to turn off the power at the switch panel so as to save battery power.
This is the most useful way of using the compass, to have it help you as a backup to your sailing abilities in feeling the wind, the trim of the boat and so on to make sure you stay heading somewhere towards wherever you intended to go, and lessen your tendency to wander all over the Bay like a Saturday afternoon power boater who's had too many beers. By the way, I am not mocking anyone but myself. If I steer on any point of sail other than close hauled which is the easiest, I wander all over the place like that, so don't think it's easy. It will be interesting to see how good I can get after 20 or 30 years of sailing should I be lucky enough to have that long to practice. As for now, I am not very good on the helm if I get distracted at all, and it appears this device helps a lot.
But you say, what about those other 4 buttons? The top four I have been keeping a secret? Let's suppose you're happily zipping along on a beam or broad reach on a beautiful S.F. Bay afternoon heading home from Angel Island or somewhere and your skipper/crew sighted helper sees that your present course will, on average, take you right into a foot of the Bay Bridge if you don't do something about it.
You could push the left bottom button, taking the compass out of auto mode, and have your helper re-do the course to get you headed to a safer destination, like right down the center of the chosen span of bridge, and then say "Go" and press the auto button and start steering again.
Or, your skipper could just say, 'Maybe we should try about 5 degrees to starboard to miss that bridge foot, and you could just press the top starboard button on the compass 5 times. This button tells the compass that you want to change your course 1 degree to starboard every time you push it. The button to the port side tells the compass to change its course to port by 1 degree with each push. The two buttons below this pair change the course by 10 degrees with each press to port and starboard as you might expect. This allows you to make easy corrections to the course you're following without having to swap the helm to someone else and cause a loss of concentration. Or, if your skipper wants to be sneaky, as Sue is wont to do, bless her heart, (no sarcasm intended, I love "sneaky") she/he can just reach past your shoulder and press the appropriate button to get the change necessary and you'll wonder how come you're having to steer that away more did the wind shift? No, actually the compass speaks the new course selected whenever you change it with the buttons so the sneaky doesn't work. HaHa.
You can also, as I hope is clear from this rather informal description, set up a magnetic course, or once the compasses are "Swung" you'll be able to, by pressing the left bottom button to hear the current course, and then correcting the reading with the top adjustment buttons until you get the course you need to steer. Then press the bottom right button to go into "Auto" mode and steer away till the thing stops beeping or alternates high/low beeps in about equal numbers.
A couple of further notes, if you're not already confused. One of the relatively minor design flaws in the compass is that there is no way to change the width of the "Window" of silence you get between the port and starboard indications of error. This would be nice, if you were a good helmsman and trying to steer through a race or through traffic, it'd be nice to set the window down to a degree or two so you'd have a means of trying to keep a really tight course. On the other hand, if you're trying to steer off shore in 15 foot swells on a beam reach where 10 or 15 degrees of slop doesn't matter, and you are trying to steer to hit the waves easily, the 5 degree window is going to be way too small and drive you nuts with its overly fussy beeping.
Another feature I haven't tried yet, is the "Tack" feature. If you press both "Starboard" buttons, the 1 and 10 degree shift buttons on the same side at once, the unit is supposed to set you up for a starboard tack. It is supposed to add 100 degrees to starboard to the current course and announce the new course so that you can tack the boat and have the automatic beeping mode all set for you on a probably pretty close hit for your new course. I haven't tried this yet, as I do find it fairly easy to tack the boat and get fairly close to the appropriate new heading as the boat falls off the eye of the wind and grabs the new groove on the other tack.
Also, pressing both bottom buttons at the same time, puts the device in a "Calibrate" mode which is used to set its internal memory for the deviation and magnetic anomalies present in a new installation. This I have done to match the visual compass, and I will re-do it when we've got the visual compass deviated and corrected. So please don't get into calibrate mode, or if you do, press the two buttons at the same time again and get it out of that mode.
After all this babble, here's a summary of the compass' location, and operation.
Remove and stow the lid to the inspection port by unscrewing counter clockwise about 2 turns. You can put this lid back on if things are wet. Please do this so as not to get too much water into the instrumentation and wiring box where the compass lives.
Turn on the master battery switch under the companionway ladder. Turn on the compass power on the auxiliary electrical panel, with the second switch from the bottom in the column just left of the hinge. Set up a course by visual means or however you need to do it depending on current circumstances, remember that as of this writing, the compasses are not accurate to magnetic readings.
When you're headed where you want to go, press the bottom right button on the compass and hear "Auto" followed by the course as the compass thinks it is. Steer away, use all your sailing skills, if you can feel the wind, or the trim of the boat to steer like a sailor does. Listen to the compass beep, low pitch beeps increasing in beep rate as you swing off course to port. High pitched beeps increasing in beep rate as you swing off course to starboard. If course corrections are necessary use the top row, one degree port/starboard, or the second row, 10 degrees port/starboard to make corrections to the course the compass is helping you steer.
When your trick at the helm is over, press the lower left button on the compass and it'll announce "Manual" and stop beeping. (Whew)
If you're going to leave the compass out of use for any period of time, it's probably best to turn its power switch on the auxiliary electrical panel off to save batteries.
If any of you who use this compass think the lid for the inspection port over the compass needs to be on a lanyard hooked to the lid and the boat, I am thinking about this. Please do put the lid back in place when done with the compass, this is the only waterproof seal in this installation, and we'd like to keep E.T. dry as much as possible.
If you try it out, and please do, let me know what you think. Apparently Autohelm is no longer manufacturing this neat little unit, and I am planning to use a commercially available "Compass module" to design the next generation of the thing as a project at work. Particularly those of you with experience with access technology, I'd like your input as I plan the next generation.
When we figure out how to install the other two compasses we have on the Freedoms in a manner that will work properly and be out of the way when not in use, we will do so.
Give this neat little gadget a try, and take your watch at the helm with more independence and responsibility in your hands. If you share my deep affection for Endless Time, please share my joy sailing her and making her even more fun to know.
Tom The Com.
Last updated 5-22-1999