What is a Seakeeper Gyro & How Does a Seakeeper Gyro Work?
What is a Seakeeper?
What is a Seakeeper on a boat, & how does a Seakeeper work? We explain how the Seakeeper gyro stabilizer system functions at rest & underway on yachts & ships
What is a Seakeeper stabilizer? It's a gyro stabilizer for boats that is vacuum encapsulated to reduce weight and power usage while increasing the gyroscope’s effectiveness. The Seakeeper is water cooled, which allows it to work more efficiently than the air cooled gyroscopes on the market and which can significantly improve your boating experience. A Seakeeper can be installed just about anywhere on your boat – with no ventilation requirements. If you’re interested in increasing your boat’s stability and in improving your ride – whatever the vessel’s size – the Seakeeper is the only choice.
What is a Seakeeper on a boat?
A Seakeeper represents leading marine motion control technology that is designed to eliminate at least 80% of a boat's pitch and roll. This is accomplished by dampening the vessel's cyclic roll motions on the water and can vastly improve the boating experience for everyone. The Seakeeper is a gyro stabilizer for boats, which means it employs the physics of gyroscopes as a sea stabilizer. The science of gyroscopic motion ensures that rotating objects tend to maintain the orientation of their rotation, and its use in the Seakeeper produces a mighty gyroscopic torque to port and starboard, which effectively and efficiently battles the problem of boat roll.
How does a Seakeeper work?
How does the Seakeeper work? The Seakeeper gyro stabilizer system applies the physics of gyroscopes through the vacuum encapsulation of a sphere in which a steel flywheel spins at an intense rate. The effects of this gyroscopic stabilizer allow a boat that's going into a roll to precess ( or tilt ) fore and aft counteracting the rolling motion and is designed to provide a smooth ride.
There are several elements of smart technology in the Seakeeper that are helping to revolutionize the boating industry by providing excellent vessel stabilization.
The Seakeeper's vacuum encapsulation
By vacuum encapsulating the Seakeeper gyro, all the following advantages are achieved:
The flywheel's weight is cut considerably
The flywheel can spin three times faster
The Seakeeper's critical components are protected from the marine environment
The effects of air friction are not a concern.
Each of these is something that an air cooled gyroscopic system simply cannot offer.
The Seakeeper's hydraulic braking system and active control system
Seakeeper’s incorporate a hydraulic braking system controlled by their patented active control programming. This allows them to utilize revolutionary technology, which not only gauges the sea state but also reacts instantaneously to it, affording optimal performance, regardless of speeds and sea conditions. The Seakeeper is designed to counteract the motion of the sea automatically with no input required on the part of the person handling the boat.
The Seakeeper's Cooling System
The Seakeeper's patented cooling system removes heat from within the vacuum enclosure and dissipates it through a glycol/seawater combination by utilizing a custom heat exchanger. Additionally, the Seakeeper uses only modest electrical power. All of this makes the Seakeeper the most efficient gyro stabilizer choice for even smaller boats, and it can be installed virtually anywhere on board.
Something Extra for Fishermen
In addition to all that, the Seakeeper also keeps your hull stable, which allows your fishing sonar system to remain trained on your fishing target. If fishing is your game, Seakeeper’s are fishing boat stabilizers that you shouldn't ignore. Boats experience the most roll when they're at rest, which translates to peak fishing, and the stabilization afforded by a Seakeeper can prove invaluable to your overall catch.
What does a Seakeeper do that any other gyroscope for boats doesn’t?
The Seakeeper is the only gyro stabilization system which is encapsulated in a vacuum with Helium. Because or this there is much less friction and heat inside the Seakeeper gyro, the majority of the heat is contained to the electronic equipment which is cooled by the Seakeeper patented cooling system. The other gyro systems on the market must be cooled by the air and as a result requires considerable space for ventilation as well as slower gyro spinning speed which require their units to be much heavier, require more electricity and they areless efficient overall than the Seakeeper stabilization system.
The water cooling system
The seawater cooling system in the Seakeeper offers a range of advantages over the air cooling approach in other boat gyros, including:
The seawater cooling system has fewer power needs than, weighs less, and takes up less space than air cooled gyroscopic systems
In order for a non-encapsulated gyro to provide the same optimal performance at all speeds, it would have to either be much larger or draw considerably more power to achieve that same level of angular momentum
The Seakeeper's seawater cooling system is small and is contained within the unit itself except for the small exterior seawater pump.
Years of research and development went into the Seakeeper's seawater cooling system, and it shows.
Tri Sea Stabilizers
At Tri Sea Stabilizers, we're so committed to the Seakeeper's superiority in terms of stable performance that it's all we do. We are the only Seakeeper dealer anywhere in the Southwest that specializes exclusively in the Seakeeper. We've installed these amazing machine’s in vessels as cozy as 23 feet and in yachts as dramatic as 165 feet. We take great pride in the reputation we've earned for ourselves as being the largest and top performing Seakeeper installation company in the industry.
Some of the attributes that set our Veteran owned and operated business include:
We were the 2022 Seakeeper Dealer of the year
We've been an award winning dealer for six years and counting
We've earned BBB A-plus accreditation
We have the most certified Seakeeper Master Techs on our crew – many of whom have earned American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) Certification, the ultimate credential as a Master Technician
We have over 75 years of combined Seakeeper experience across our multiple locations
In other words, we're far more than just a dealer, and along with our Seakeeper Fort Lauderdale location we have convenient offices in Tampa, Naples, Miami, and the Florida Keys. This is in addition to our Wilmington, North Carolina, location – where we represent in the Mid-Atlantic. If you're interested in learning more about the Seakeeper itself, about the Seakeeper cost for a specific unit, or about the installation and service we offer, we've got the answers you're looking for and welcome your enquiries.
Not sure if the Seakeeper is for you, we offer a demo ride on our Seakeeper-equipped boat that will afford you a far better understanding of exactly how effective this unique boat stabilization system is. To schedule a demo ride or to learn more, simply give us a call at 833-TRI-GYRO, email us at info@triseakeeper.com or use our contact page today.
FAQs
Does Seakeeper work underway?
Yes, Seakeeper eliminates almost all resonant roll at all speeds, but a Seakeeper won't correct static heel or bow steering. Boats spend most of their time at rest, and it is at rest and at slow speeds when boat roll is most problematic and a stabilizer is appreciated the most.
Boat roll refers to that side-to-side motion so common to boat's and so closely associated with seasickness. A boat that's in motion is inherently more stable than a boat that's at rest, which means that – all things being equal – your Seakeeper has far less work to do when you're cruising.
However, Our customers also report that due to Seakeeper, they now enjoy traveling at displacement speeds with less noise, less fuel, and now with less roll, and they can enjoy the journey not just the destination.
A lot of the time you spend on your boat is at anchor or otherwise at rest, which makes the kind of stabilizing that the Seakeeper offers especially beneficial. While you don't need that roll stabilization as much when you're underway, it, nevertheless, has advantageous applications. For example, it also allows you to seamlessly adjust in the wake of larger vessels.
Does a Seakeeper work on a catamaran?
The short answer is YES! The long answer is: The properties of catamarans differ greatly from monohulls, and they vary significantly from one cat model to the next and Seakeeper corporate wrote all of their programming for a monohull. For this reason, Seakeeper cannot guarantee the same performance on a multihull vessel that they can on a monohull.
We have completed quite a few catamaran Seakeeper installations and can say catamarans require more angular momentum to achieve the same stabilization as a similarly sized monohull vessel. So typically we would move up a size from the normal sizing guidelines to get the desired stabilization.
What is a gyro on a boat, is it the same as a Seakeeper?
No, not really. While a Seakeeper is a Gyro Stabilizer, not all boat gyros are created equal. Unlike most gyro stabilizers, the Seakeeper is vacuum encapsulated, water cooled and incorporates a patented active control system to help you make the most of your time on the water.