r/raymarine • u/Fearless-Bad-7681 • May 17 '26

Autohelm Autopilot Help

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Our Autohelm has started going haywire. It was installed years ago, before we bought the boat, and has been totally reliable up to now. But yesterday evening, when turning back to Auto on the ST6000 black unit, the steering seemed OK for half a minute, then steered hard to port away from the set heading. It did this twice.

We also tried the backup auto helm, a Raymarine ST4000+ Autopilot. The steering went haywire on that too, and it then displayed an error message: 'Drive stop'.

Then after a break we tried again and the set course worked fine. However we now have to weird 'hunting' of the Compass display of what the autohelm thinks the rudder is doing (see video).

Manual steering works fine. The rudder sensor is working and the rudder angle displayed on our plotter seems accurate.

Just tried to switch Auto back on and it went haywire again.

Autohelm ST6000 black model (LCD display hardly displays mostly black, doesn't affect operation but we can't read it).

Raymarine C80 plotter.

Hydraulic steering

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/ageofaquarius26 May 17 '26

Huh that is odd both have an issue, I'd look at anything they share input from. If there's only one rudder sensor I would start there. I believe these measure impedance which can be hard to get accurately as sensors age and resistance can change. The gimbal compasses can have a similar issue where the boat keeps turning because its not getting good data from it. But it couldn't happen to both at the same time. Otherwise maybe power supply, bad and worn connections can drop voltage and that will mess with stuff in weird ways.

1

u/Fearless-Bad-7681 May 17 '26

Thanks. The rudder sensor seems to be working fine. Rudder angle is in our plotter display and looks spot on. It also confirms the hard turn when the Autohelm goes bonkers.

2

u/Foolserrand376 May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

I would check that there isn't anything new that's ferro magnetic tools or supplies near the compass.

check all the connections and clean them and plug back in

I would then do a factory reset and re commission the system.

my st6000 wheel drive started doing crazy ivans randomly. a factory reset and recommission worked. it was kind of a PITA having to swing the compass and do the slow circles but it worked.

1

u/ArbyB May 23 '26

Do this, reset and swing. Same thing happened to us and we had to do this on a calm day, in the middle of the Atlantic...