What Are the Benefits of an Autopilot?
Transcript is auto-generated.
hi youtubers jeff cote here we've got another installment of ask pys all right we've got a question here from a fellow boarder and she asks can you explain the benefits of putting an autopilot on my boat i have a 45 cruiser so what's the purpose of an autopilot an autopilot is a device right and it's got multiple parts but it's basically a device that can do multiple things one is it can hold a course so if you are basically having your boat in one direction and you want your boat to keep going in that direction you could simply engage your autopilot and have that boat stay on that heading and it will stay on that heading until you disengage it or it doesn't have propulsion anymore and it'll just stay in that direction so that's basically using your autopilot just for going to a heading the next purpose of an autopilot is saying hey jeff you know i'd like to be able to go to that waypoint a waypoint is a coordinate right from gps and you're saying i'd like to go there so now you can assuming that your chart plotter is connected to your autopilot you can say create a waypoint go to waypoint and then on your autopilot you say hey by the way i'm not going to ask you to go to a heading i'm going to ask you to track and then you enable track and then the autopilot is going to prompt you and say are you sure you want to go to this waypoint and then you acknowledge and then the autopilot is going to bring you to that waypoint so that's the second purpose of an autopilot it's a way for you to go to waypoints the third way of using an autopilot is saying hey i'm actually would like to follow a sequence of waypoints a sequence of waypoints is really a route that's what it is it's how do you get from a to b and you have to go to multiple points and again you can create a route on your chart plotter and then you can say i want to follow this route and assuming that your chartplotter is connected to your autopilot your autopilot now is going to actually follow that route it gets even better some modern chart plotters like for example garmin are going to have this auto route feature so you don't even have to create a sequence of waypoints anymore for a route it will actually create a route for you and if you have a garmin char plotter and a garmin autopilot it will actually have the boat follow that route that was automatically generated by the char plotter so those are all good reasons to have an autopilot now here's a even better reason to have an autopilot most of us are not sailing with full crew meaning sometimes we're all by ourselves we might have someone else on board maybe a few other people on board but it does happen sometimes where you have to have someone on the helm and things get really crazy they get chaotic you don't know somebody got injured you need to hold on a course and it's happened to some of my voters you know there's a couple on board one of them for example hurt his finger trying to work on the engine and actually really cut his finger really bad and they had a long passage ahead of them they were far away they had to motor for 10 hours to get back to civilization where they could bring the husband to the hospital and so what was incredible about the autopilot is the autopilot was basically a second set of hands holding a course and so as the partner the wife was doing everything on the boat and the husband was tending to his wound it was less stressful than having one person being holding the helm all the time so an autopilot is one of these things that until you taste it try it you don't think you need but the moment you have it you realize how useful it is to have an autopilot be there and be a second set of hands to hold your boat course or heading steady as you go to a destination so those would be the reasons why i would get an autopilot for my boat thank you for watching this pys video if you've got further questions ask them down below or go on our website to fill one of the forms don't forget to subscribe and thanks for watching
