It's all about force to turn the wheel. If your boat has a balanced spade rudder that doesn't take much effort to turn the wheel at speed, the X5 will work just fine. My unbalanced, high effort steering system wouldn't with the X5 under sail above about 4 knots. The force required to turn the wheel and fight the weather helm was just too great. Not bad mouthing the X5, just that our boat has a particlarly heavy helm though the boat was well within the designed weight and size limits. Have a friend with the same system on a Catalina 36 who doesn't have any problems.