"NO PILOT" message and locked wheel!

[Bob MacWright]

My boat is less than a year old, but the autopilot has had a bad problem. All is well for about 2 hours, and then I get a "NO PILOT" message, a beep, and the wheel locks! To steer again, you have to turn off the autopilot at the breaker. After about 10 minutes, you can turn it back on again, and it will work for about half an hour and do it again. You can get many half hour reprieves, but it always goes.

The local Raymarine service company replaced the rudder sensor, but no luck. Now they are replacing the course computer, and hopefully that will do it.

Anybody else have this problem?

[Tim OSullivan]

Bob, i had the identical problem and sent my computer back to Raymarine for a bench check. They could not duplicate the problem but according to the technician they replaced a couple of capacitors in the board. I reinstalled the unit about 10 months ago and have not had a problem since. However, a word of caution, I was backing into my slip and the wheel locked up at a critical time. I managed to pull forward without hitting anything and reset the breaker. So now I always shutoff the autopilot prior to docking --- just in case.

Tim

Seaquel
Antigua WI

[Bob MacWright]

My Raymarine guy will be glad, too. He has been telling Raymarine that it is a course computer problem, but they have been unconvinced. Good point about coming into the slip - that must have been a fright! I'll turn it off from now on!