Safety and rules · 7 minute read
Singlehanded sailing with an autopilot
How solo sailors use an autopilot safely in Australian waters: tethers, remotes, alarms, sleep on coastal legs, lookout duty and power budgeting.
Sail alone and the autopilot stops being a convenience. It becomes the only other pair of hands on board, and every decision you make about rigging it, powering it and monitoring it has a safety consequence. A solo skipper with a well set up pilot can reef, navigate, cook and rest. A solo skipper with a marginal pilot spends the passage hand steering until judgement fails.
This guide is about the parts of solo sailing that the brochures skip: what happens if you go over the side while the pilot steers on, how to honour the lookout rule when there is only one of you, why the watch arrangement must allow rest without abandoning lookout, and how to make the batteries last from Eden to Hobart or Bundaberg to Cairns without motoring to charge.
Key facts
- Biggest risk
- Falling off a boat that keeps sailing without you
- Lookout
- COLREGs Rule 5 applies to solo sailors with no exemption
- Remote
- A cockpit or waist-worn remote is close to essential
- Typical draw
- 0.5 to 1 A for a tiller pilot, 1 to 3 A for a linear drive
- Rest
- Plan rest without leaving the vessel unwatched
- Backup
- A second pilot, a windvane, or sheet-to-tiller
Autopilot limitations for solo sailors
An autopilot holds a heading or a wind angle. That is all it does. It does not see the trawler with no AIS, it does not notice the squall line building over the ranges, and it does not care that you have been on deck for nineteen hours. Everything the pilot buys you is time, and time is only useful if you spend it on lookout, navigation, sail trim and rest.
Solo sailors who get into trouble rarely do so because the pilot failed. They get into trouble because the pilot worked beautifully for hours while the skipper drifted into a state where nothing was being watched properly. Build your routine around that risk, not around the electronics.
Tethering, and the boat that sails on without you
This is the part solo sailors must be blunt about. If you go over the side with the pilot steering, the boat keeps going. There is no crew to bear away, no one to press the man-overboard button, and at five knots the boat is 150 metres away in under a minute. Swimming after it is not a plan.
So the whole discipline is about never separating from the boat: jacklines rigged so the tether cannot let you reach the rail, short tethers on the foredeck, a harness worn from dusk and in any breeze, and the habit of clipping on before you leave the companionway rather than after.
- Jacklines rigged inboard, on the centreline where possible, not along the toerail
- Tether short enough that you cannot go past the lifelines with it clipped
- Clip on before you come out of the hatch, not once you are already on deck
- PLB or AIS MOB beacon worn on the person, not stowed in a locker
- A second means of climbing back aboard: a stern ladder you can drop from the water, or a permanently deployed trailing line with a loop
- Harness, tether and jackline webbing checked for UV damage each season
Assume no rescue from your own boat
Remotes, alarms and staying in touch with the boat
A remote control turns the whole boat into a helm station. Nudging the heading ten degrees while you are sitting on the coachroof watching the headsail is worth far more than it sounds, because it removes the temptation to leave a job half done and scramble aft. Wired remotes are cheap and never lose signal. Wireless units are better again for foredeck work, provided you accept that signal can drop and you know what the pilot does when it does.
Alarms are the other half. Set an off-course alarm tight enough to catch a wind shift or a drive that has given up, a cross-track alarm for the legs where staying on the line matters, an AIS closest point of approach alarm, and a shallow alarm with enough sea room in it to be useful rather than startling. A depth alarm set at half a metre under the keel is decoration.
Fatigue is a passage-planning constraint
There is no universal safe sleep interval for a skipper who is the only lookout. An autopilot, timer, AIS display or radar alarm does not keep a proper human lookout. Plan a passage length, crew arrangement and opportunities to stop that allow rest without leaving the vessel unwatched.
Being offshore does not remove lookout responsibilities. If fatigue makes an effective watch impossible, reassess the passage and obtain appropriate assistance or a safe opportunity to stop. Do not interpret the absence of AIS targets as evidence that there is nothing to encounter.
Rule 5 has no solo exemption
The lookout requirement in the international collision regulations, which apply in Australian waters, asks for a proper lookout by sight and hearing and by all available means appropriate to the circumstances. There is no clause that says a solo sailor may sleep. Plenty of people sail alone anyway, and the honest position is that a solo sailor manages the gap rather than closes it.
Managing it means using every tool that extends your eyes. A working AIS transceiver so commercial traffic sees you and you see them. Radar with a guard zone if you have it. Good masthead and deck lighting. Routing that keeps you off the shipping lanes rather than across them, which matters on the New South Wales coast where north and south bound traffic runs close inshore, and inside the Great Barrier Reef where the shipping is funnelled into a narrow route.
It also means being awake when it counts: at dusk and dawn, near headlands, across shipping lanes, and anywhere the fishing fleet works. Fishing boats trawling without AIS remain the traffic most likely to surprise a solo sailor on the Australian coast.
Say it plainly to yourself
Solo passage power budgets and steering failure
A tiller pilot pulling an average of half an amp to an amp is 12 to 24 amp hours a day. A below-deck on a 12 metre cruiser averaging 1 to 3 amps is 24 to 70 amp hours a day, and in a following sea at the top of that range it can be more. Add instruments, plotter, AIS, fridge and lights and the daily figure on a modest cruiser gets to 100 amp hours quickly.
Know what your pilot does at low voltage too. Most will alarm and disengage rather than steer badly, which is the right behaviour but a nasty surprise at three in the morning if you have never seen it. A windvane, or even a practised sheet-to-tiller rig on a small boat, is a genuine zero-power backup.
Practise the takeover before you need it
The single most useful drill for a solo sailor is taking the helm from the pilot at speed, in the dark, with the boat overpowered. Every system has its own disengage: a clutch lever on a tiller pilot, a standby button on the control head, a bypass valve on some hydraulic systems, on a Garmin hydraulic install that hands you the helm the moment you turn the wheel. Your hands should find it without your eyes.
The second drill is heaving to with the pilot engaged and then with it off, so you know which works on your boat. Being able to stop the boat and make her look after herself is what lets a solo sailor deal with a fouled halyard, a torn sail or a wound.
- Disengage and hand steer within two seconds, from below and from the cockpit
- Heave to under pilot and under hand, in both directions
- Tack and gybe with the pilot engaged, then with it in standby
- Deliberately trigger the off-course and low-voltage alarms so you know their sound
- Fit and test the emergency tiller with the pilot disconnected
- Run the boat for an hour on the backup steering arrangement you say you have
Australian legs that punish a thin plan
Eden to Hobart is the classic solo test on the east coast: a long exposed leg across Bass Strait where the East Australian Current, a southerly change and a short steep sea can arrive together. It is a passage that rewards a pilot with real steering authority and punishes an underpowered one, because running downwind in a Bass Strait sea is exactly where a weak pilot broaches.
Bundaberg to Cairns is a different problem: days of reaching in the trades with tidal streams to work, a stream of shipping inside the Reef, and long stretches where the only traffic is a trawler. Here the pilot is on for almost the entire passage, so the energy budget and drive wear matter more than raw power.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is it legal to sail singlehanded in Australia?
There is no general prohibition on sailing alone in Australian waters, and solo voyaging is common. The collision regulations still require a proper lookout at all times, and state maritime authorities and AMSA expect the vessel to be operated safely, so the practical limits come from safe operation rather than a ban. Race entries and some charter or insurance conditions may impose their own crew requirements.
Should I fit a windvane as well as an electric pilot?
For long offshore passages it is the most reliable backup available, because it uses no power and has no electronics to fail. Windvanes steer to the wind rather than a compass course, so they are less useful for motoring or for tight coastal navigation. Many solo cruisers carry both and use the electric pilot under power and the vane on long sailing legs.
How do I stop the boat if I fall overboard?
Realistically you cannot, which is why the entire solo safety plan is built around staying attached to the boat. Some sailors rig a kill-cord style arrangement or a wireless MOB device that triggers an alarm or a pilot response, but none of them reliably stops a sailing yacht and recovers you. Treat the tether as the primary system and the beacon as the last resort.
How much sleep can I safely take on a coastal passage?
No fixed interval can be presented as safe when it leaves the boat without a proper lookout. Arrange suitable crew, shorter legs and safe opportunities to stop and rest. Electronic alarms and an autopilot do not replace the watch.
Practise autopilot operation with an instructor
Habits are learned at the helm with someone watching. The training section explains what a good instructor covers and where to find one in your state.