I built six more and with bated breath
placed the first advert in Yachting World magazine in August
1968. Within two weeks a French Canadian called Leo Cotourier
worked into my workshop, gave me a cheque and I air freighted
a vane gear to Gibraltar the next day. Needless to say I did
not tell him he was my very first customer! I hope he is well
and that he reads this!
The first model Aries used the inefficient
and large vertically pivoted wind vane. I had in fact developed
the horizontally pivoting vane before I sold the first Aries
but decided to delay its introduction to give myself more time
and stay with something that I knew worked and was tested. Apart
from the first 40 Aries produced all others had horizontally
pivoted vanes.
In fact, the vane axis is approximately
25° from the horizontal to prevent 'oversteer'. In the mid
60's none of this had been tried let alone the ration between
the wind Vane and Servo Rudder and Bevel Gear ratios in the linkage
to also prevent rudder oversteer. To solve these questions I
made a completely adjustable Vane Gear on which you could alter
every linkage ratio, angle and balance etc on the Vane Gear by
hand while it was actually steering the yacht. I used by father's
Dragon Class Keelboat which has a responsive helm and in ten
minutes had solved the entire problem. Every Aries since has
had the same design and despite trying hard I have not been able
to improve it.
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