One other positive aspect of a below deck pilot is that of system redundancy. Whereas in a wheel pilot, if your steering cable were to break or the chain to break inside the pedestal, you would need to go scrambling for your "emergency tiller" which is often undersized, aligned backwards or buried down below all the crapola in the sail locker. Steering gear rarely breaks in benign conditions, so this can be a bit of a problem. The wheel mounted pilot is rendered useless.
However, a below deck autopilot ram also serves as an electronic emergency steering device that is separately mounted to the rudder post. This is exactly why makers of the autopilot rams tell you to never mount their rams to the quadrant or radial drive wheel (also because those components aren't engineered to support the single point loads of the ram). Most folks doing coastal cruising don't generally "worry" about steering failure as they feel they can either steer the boat by sail alone or would simply call Sea Tow on the VHS to come to their rescue. But a below deck autopilot can sure lessen the panic of having the steering go away.. Chuck Gilchrest Half Magic LF 35 Padanarm, MA
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