Hi Scott, Ain't that Wind Horse quite a boat! Someday, I'd love to have a boat like that! All ships have redundant rams and pumps. They are in the business of making money. So is Dashew, and he has shown he has no qualms about spending it on niceties. But plenty of plain-jane sailboats are passagemaking every day, many with only windvanes, most with single autopilots, some, like my Westsail, with both. Although they can be cranky, most APs are very dependable, and spares are reasonable to carry. Someone wrote about bigger rams, but they are not the answer to "slewing" in a following sea, and one needs to be careful here as you could twist the rudderstock right off; the hardover to hardover speed needs to be engineered to match the scantlings of the rest of the steering gear. Regards, John "Seahorse" Scott wrote: Dashew talks about having redundant autopilots. While I have a fairly simple autopilot in my Camano, I know there is one sea state it doesn't deal with very well at all. In a following sea the autopilot can not control the boat. I believe its the dynamics of the square stern and how it wallows off a wave. If I direct the boat I can anticipate the wave and start a correcting input even before the course has begun to change. Do larger ocean capable boats have much better autopilots capable of dealing with all ocean conditions (other than the worst of course)? Is a Krogen much more sea kindly that a Nordhavn because of their stern shapes? Does this sea kindly performance translate into differing requirements for an autopilot? Does everyone agree that having a completely redundant, installed autopilot is a requirement for an ocean capable boat, or are spares adequate? Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.