Last summer I carried a little notebook and pencil in a ziplock bag in my boat so I could jot down questions and ideas as they occurred to me (generally about sailing or problems associated there-with).
I was flipping through that notebook today and came across an item from early last summer when I was first facing the challenges of trying to keep my bow pointed into the wind in order to raise & lower the sails. In the weeks & months following that note, I improved my sail management processes (tiller tamer, jib furler and mainsail mast gate) to make the transitions easier, but even late in the year I remember being frustrated having to constantly reach back to nudge the tiller trying to keep pointed upwind when trying to reef the mainsail or addressing something else forward.
A thought had occurred to me back then about using some form of wind vane and linkage to keep the boat pointed upwind. After doing a couple drawings, I came up with several possible options, but it occurs to me now (again) that I can't have been the first one to come across this challenge. So I'll ask here before I continue down a redundant path reinventing the wheel. I should establish that in my planning, I would assume to be under power for that activity (i.e. trolling motor) as opposed to drifting backward which I know has it's own new series of dynamics.
Is anyone had any experience with a wind vane (or otherwise) tiller control system to keep a DSII sized boat (under power) pointed into the wind? I've seen references to autopilots out there, but I'm thinking those are probably for more for extended duration trips rather than 2-3 minutes here and there and probably prohibitively expensive for such limited use.
As always, I would appreciate any information and/or thoughts on this subject.
Thanks - Scott