boat but elected not to have one on Brendon this time. We made the decision to do coastal passage making and went with davits on the stern. There are ways to have both but for the kind of cruising we are doing it made more sense to be able to haul up the dinghy at night with less effort. We still put it on deck for longer passages but when in one place for a few days it really makes it much more easy to protect the dinghy from theft. If I was going to cross long distances again a good wind vane makes all the difference in the world. The only down side to a vane is when the waves are so high that you loose the wind in the trough. That only happened to me once but it sure was exciting! Halfway down the face of the wave all of a sudden you have no steering because there isn't any wind. You talk about a mad scramble. We ended up towing 200 feet of 5/8 in line in a big loop which held the stern into the wave until we reached the bottom and then halfway up the wave backside as the wave passed. Halfway up the wind came back and the vane snapped back into action. We did 5 knots that way for three days. There is no way any auto pilot could have done that. Certainly, a short handed crew could not have hand steered that long without making some really ugly mistake. The picture is of me back in the 80's on my Cape Dory 30 somewhere cold.