The H28 with her long keel, is a particularly stable vessel and easy on the Helmsman. She will even steer herself for short periods while the solo helmsman attends to sail trim. But, as any long distance sailor will tell you, the pointless drudgery of long hours at the tiller takes much of the pleasure out of passage making. The answer is a self steering arrangement.

When I took Jambelot to Picton in 1979, I borrowed a homemade "QMF" type vane, which drives the tiller lines (see fig1) for the journey; but, in spite of much fiddling, I was unable to get satisfactory performance on any point of sailing. Obviously more power was required. The more complex servo powered systems like "Navik" and "Aries", are rather expensive, So I decided to build a trim tab system (Fig 2) based on a collection of ideas from books, magazines and existing systems.

The principle is simple. Fig 3 shows a boat on close reach, sails trimmed and self steering set. At Fig 4 she has wandered off the wind a few degrees. The windvane weathercocks and in doing so, turns the trim tab in the same direction. The water flow over the trim tab then causes the rudder to drive the other way (Fig 5), thus bringing the boat back onto the desired heading (fig 6).