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Nick Franklin was very "safe at sea"
minded. Many vane gear builders of today are not. Many vane gear builders take higher priority in modern design, weight and "not in use" friendliness.
To overcome these to problems described
in the previous page Nick Franklin designed his new vane gear, the one that later proved itself to be so good, strong and efficient that he never again managed to make any major improvements.
This is the model that we still produce today; Aries Standard:
The shaft is supported in both ends which
makes the construction strong against harbour manoeuvres too close to poles and other things (like going reverse into a concrete jetty). The travel of the servo rudder is limited by the two
"A" tubes as we call them which prevents the vane gear to loose control of the boat in bad weather. I asked Nick Franklin why many vane gear builders still made the type of gear he discarded
many years ago: "They know the problem", he replied, "but they don't care about a 5% negative response of their product." So if you want to be safe in any conditions at sea, you must choose a
vane gear, which have taken care of the "bad weather problem". What is the value of a lightweight gear, easy to stove when entering harbour if you get problems in bad weather.
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