cockpit enclosure or just start with a well designed pilot House? Once again, I have read what you and others have written and it confirmed my decision 15 years ago to go with a PH. Open up the two doors and step into the cockpit. No ladder to climb, just one step up and over the bridge deck, into the cockpit. It's not really a bridge deck, just an 8 inch high sill. You can increase that another 6 inches with a drop board which will take you to the level of the seat. The doors have to be up that high to open up all the the way back against the PH. As for the Monitor, you could have stepped into the cockpit to the adjustment wheel located just outside at the cockpit door. It would have consisted of a separate block on a pretty strong SS spring about 6 inches long. That pulley was attached to the line that ran back to the adjustment pulley on on the Monitor held under tension by the SS spring which was attached to the cabin. If you wanted to drop down south a bit, just open the door, grab the control line and just pull the line to port 1/2 inch. Done, go back in inside with your hot coffee. Once the rudder is dropped down, the control line in place, all you have is to spin the vane around until it stands up, push the engage button or lever on the wheel and balance up the rig, tweak the control line and you're down the road. Then you pray for two things. One, that the wind doesn't drop below 10 knots(or what ever it needs to keep the boat moving about two knots. Second, you pray really hard that the wind doesn't blow so hard that it builds a swell that's so high that when you drop down into the bottom, there is no wind! I've been down in the holes so deep the vane just stops working and the boat starts these death S rolls until the boat gets high enough on the next following wave to lift you back up into the weather and wind. We ended up tossing 200 feet of 5/8 inch 8 plate stern line to drag the stern back when we were "down in the ditch" like that. The harder the wind blew, the better the Monitor liked it. It's job is to steer, our job is to keep it in enough air to do it. Some times that's not all that easy. It would be no different with any other kind of vane. They all need the wind, unblocked by wave height or cockpit enclosure and a well balanced boat to give you the ride of your life. It's hard to describe the feeling you get, at that moment, the most important piece of equipment on the boat is your vane. It's blowing 35/40 knots. You know your auto pilot hasn't a chance of working in these seas. You know you have 600 miles to go in this stuff and your sitting with your back to the cockpit watching this contraption steering the boat way better then you ever could and after about an hour on watch and you say to yourself. "Man!, am I ever glad I bought that thing!