Ryan,
Have you had a look at the Sail-0-Mat pendulum vane? The designer in is La Jolla, and I'm going down to talk to him about his product next week.
I am seriously considering it as an alternative to the Monitor jungle gym.
yes, we looked very closely at the sail-o-mat and traded a number of emails with the designer before resolutely choosing Monitor. Here are our reasons why ( sorry for format and typos, am using phone and am on boat now...)
1) unlike monitor the sailomat has no provision for emergency rudder.
2) sailomat is aluminum with tons (a huge number) of steel fasteners (metric...) requiring regular maintenance with tefgel etc
3) sailomat and monitor are both very easy to mount and both removable in port. Monitor has something like 8 bolts to unscrew vs sailomat 4. No big deal.
4) this is a biggie- sailomat changes design every few years with limited to no old parts on hand. Monitor has same proven design for many years with spares easy to get if needed even in remote areas.
5) another biggie- it took multiple attempts to get any reply from sailomat and when I did get a reply it was like "the new design is being made and will be available in a few months. Try then. " Wgen I contacted monitor I had a reply with custom drawings of E38 transom mount options within a few hours. The customer service is night and day difference. Sailomat is one guy, limited production, made in batches overseas. Monitor is full time staffed office, in house custom production (made to order), rapid turn around.
6) monitor frame is actually relatively light and can be climbed on (standing on it is actually one step of the instructions). We intend to use this to help more easily reach our SolarStik and as alternate boarding steps from dinghy.
7) I agree sailomat looks better and the newest design likely works fine from a purely functional standpoint. It is however a new design (again) and therefore relatively untested. Our main concerns are function, reliability, ease of repair (including access to spares), minimal maintenance, emergency rudder, and our experience dealing with the company. Monitor may not be the sexiest piece of kit but it has a proven performance record, amazing customer support, and is the vane we feel most comfortable taking to remote areas.
For or what it's worth we also looked at Cape Horn. Even got to see one installed on an E39 close up. Looks great, even better than a sailomat, but we did not like the many lines and blocks crossing all over hard to access parts of the aft laz. Plus the unit is non removable, a poor (at best) emergency rudder option, and same customer service issues at sailomat.
if we were mainly coastal cruising or were mainly concerned about aesthetics we may have chosen differently. But if you put aesthetics aside to us the choice is clear (for our needs).