[Uhehner]

Rob; I feel your pain! We picked our new to us Tiara in June. Since bringing it home to Wiarton ON in June, we have not had it out until 2 days ago. Then it happened again- an autopilot failure! After 2 hours of being totally unable to steer at all, I called a Pan Pan on the radio. that attracted the Coast Guard Radio and Cutter and several others. After 2 hours of trying to get the Raymarine AP into Stby mode which is absolutely needed for manual steering, it finally did enter Stby and we were able to steer manually. By then the CG Cutter had almost arrived to tow us as well as another vessel. I was afraid that we could not be towed at all; our rudders were stuck in hard over port. This would have been a major problem to move the boat at all, even by towing. So we proceeded the 25 miles home to our marina under our own power. We did make it home........in spite of the fact that our 2 Ray marine gps/plotters failed to keep a fix on our position. Garmin I am coming' to get you!
Fuzzdr

ALWAYS have an autopilot power switch installed next to the control head for just such failures. You are not the first person with this problem especially with Raymarine autopilots. Capt.  George