Autopilot Interaction Adjustment

Seakeeper Ride is engineered to remove boat motions in all 3-axis, pitch, roll and yaw. This results in a more comfortable experience for all boaters. The coupled influence of yaw and roll could create scenarios where a boat’s autopilot system steering causes the boat to roll. This rolling is then detected and reduced by the Seakeeper Ride system. The associated roll reduction then causes a steering effect, which is countered again by the Autopilot. The combination of all these events can continue going undamped leading to the boat ‘hunting’ or ‘swerving’ turning continually back and forth excessively.

Seakeeper recommends first attempting to adjust the autopilot control gains. Check with your autopilot operating manual for guidance on this matter. There are multiple gains which can be changed until a satisfactory heading is maintained.

Seakeeper Ride has a ‘RF Disable’ button in user interface. This button tunes the Seakeeper Ride system to reduce the negative interaction of Ride and Autopilot avoiding the hunting or swerving loop of oversteering. This button will reduce steering interactions at the sacrifice of Seakeeper Ride performance and therefore is offered for extreme cases and we strongly recommend utilizing this only after autopilot gains have been adjusted.