My one big problem with the 711C after 4 years: No remote!

[Renegade_Sailor]

Howdy everyone

I have a 1966 Spencer 42 Sloop with a Furuno 711C auto pilot that I installed in her in 2019.


This spring we sailed up the inside Passage from Washington to Alaska, and the 711C has been great, with a couple of small gripes.

First of all talking installation, I setup the unit to run off of the old existing Autohelm 3000 drive unit, I just yanked the control board and wired it up directly, and this has actually performed flawlessly. Raymarine still sells a version of this old unit that they use with their auto pilots.

The installation was easy and straight forward, and I have had no problems with her other than when some copper strapping installed by a previous owner managed to get snagged in my prop shaft and fling up and snare the cable going to the control unit parting it, and the replacement cable being hard to obtain last year.

For the most part I quite like the auto pilot, especially when solo sailing, being able to use it for tacking and jibing has been absolutely wonderful! The pre-determined turn features have made life easy!

There is however one huge shortcoming that I am finding, and that is that Furuno is no longer offering the FAP7021 handheld control unit.


On my boat there is no helm seat, when you are steering at the helm, you are standing and when sailing having a seat there would be directly in the way as it would directly impede my ability to run the winches and handle sails.

With the old auto helm I had a corded remote that I could use to steer the boat, and this was incredibly handy, as I could sit anywhere in the cockpit and steer, or even stand on the side deck if I was needing to get a better view of something.

As it stands losing this capability has actually been something I am strongly lamenting as it was quite good. Both Garmin and Raymarine are offering such remote controls, and I am curious as to why Furuno stopped? As well if they have any plans to produce one in the future?

I have seen the current buttons only remote and to be honest I am not going to bother with it, having the knob to turn the rudder manually is something I strongly desire as in sailing the Pacific North West we are constantly dodging logs and other things in the water here, and being able to spin a knob on the remote to do that is really the way.

I am finding that without the handheld remote I am feeling tied to the helm, and in horrible weather cannot seek shelter in the dodger thus I am hoping there is a fix in the works for this as otherwise it has been a stellar setup and I am hoping to find a solution before this fall, as I will be sailing the boat to Mexico then across the South Pacific in the next year.

 

[Sparky Wire]

Yes, I agree. It would be nice to have a remote like the one offered in the NAVpilot 300 but since the NAVPilot 700 series doesn't have bluetooth hardware they can't. I will pass on your comments to product development because I am sure one day they will be coming out with a newer edition/series.

 

[Johnny Electron]

While you can fit non-follow and follow-up remotes it isn't the same as having a wireless or even the full control previously offered by the NAVpilot 720 control head. I guess one could make a box for the 711C control head where it could be walk around but a bit bulker. I also will pass comments on to product development as we get a lot of requests for remote options.

 

[Renegade_Sailor]

Yes, I agree. It would be nice to have a remote like the one offered in the NAVpilot 300 but since the NAVPilot 700 series doesn't have bluetooth hardware they can't. I will pass on your comments to product development because I am sure one day they will be coming out with a newer edition/series.

Thank you!

As well if product development would care to reach out to me, if there is anything I can do to make this a reality I would enthusiastically support it.

 

[Renegade_Sailor]

While you can fit non-follow and follow-up remotes it isn't the same as having a wireless or even the full control previously offered by the NAVpilot 720 control head. I guess one could make a box for the 711C control head where it could be walk around but a bit bulker. I also will pass comments on to product development as we get a lot of requests for remote options.

I had considered doing exactly that, I was looking at taking a weather tight pvc electrical box and putting a 2nd display control unit and a lever control in it, but the thing would be huge and bulky, not to mention expensive! $$$$

Although I may have to go that route, at the moment hoping to find either a lightly used or new old stock FAP7021.

I would love to see them simply take the display that we have on the current 711C control and put that into a molded handle, and give us the ability to drive the rudder with the knob.

In fact now that I think of it I could probably just 3D print the handle casing, but there is still the issue of controlling the rudder when I just want to use it for steering, I am familair with using the L/R arrow keys on the control to manually move the rudder, if they updated the firmware to make it once in this mode the knob would control the rudder, I would simply 3D print a handle and hook the 2nd unit up to the 2nd port and call it good.