Dear Adrian,
2/6/2004

I thought some feedback on the WindHelm was very overdue. I retired in February and spent the next month doing a major job on the hull coatings of Matilda Bay. While she was on the slips I took the opportunity of installing the WindHelm. We sailed out of Port Adelaide On March 16 bound for Fremantle. The trip was very much a cruise, with no deadlines and was purely weather dictated. In fact, we took 7 weeks to reach our destination,visiting numerous places on the way. The boat is currently berthed at the Fremantle Sailing Club, where she will stay for about a year before we head up the coast, across the top and out into the Pacific.

The WindHelm performed superbly, indeed steering the boat considerably better than us crew, certainly once any weariness had set in. I was particularly impressed at how well it steered downwind in light conditions. The only time I wasn't game to trust the helm to the WindHelm was as we approached Esperance in the middle of the night, surrounded by islands, with a confused lumpy sea and the wind pretty square behind. Overall, to say I have been delighted with the performance would be an understatement. I now wouldn't consider cruising without it.

Best Wishes
Terry Nicholas

Dear Adrian,

This is to let you know that I am still very happy with my windhelm gear.
I'm still hoping to leave for a sailing trip back to the pacific but in the mean time have been promoting your vane, 'hope that you got some enquiries from and possibly sales to The Netherlands.

Sincerely yours,
Henriette Schlupmann

Dear Adrian

I am the new owner of Adams 36 "Ghost Dog"; you provided a wind vane self steering mid 2003 for the previous owner, Marcel & Cathy van der Zee.
They used if for their journey to Noumea and reported that it worked faultlessly the whole time and sang its praises. We have now owned Ghost Dog for a couple of months and agree completely, it is a great unit.

John O'Grady

Osaka Cup Win

Roger Sayers skippered his boat Brindabella II to win his division in the 1999 Osaka Cup. The boat was equipped with a WindHelm self steering system. Following are some excerpts from a letter we received from Roger.

"What was most amazing about the unit was its ability to keep course at very low wind speeds. It worked at about 1 knot upwards. In the Doldrums it made all the difference to us. It would hold course better than we could and prevented us from spending hours at the helm in the burning sun.

""When the weather suddenly worsened about three hundred miles from Japan we let the WindHelm show its paces in really bad weather. The unit handled itself very creditable as the wind rose to gale force 8 then gale force 9."

"We sailed 5,500 miles, around 75% of them under WindHelm control. We won our division and set a new race record for cruising class C. We had taken just over 40 days to reach Osaka — about 3.5 days faster than the previous record. "