Autopilot: Will enough ever be enough?

Before The Ocean Race 2023 got underway, eventual winner Charlie Enright admitted their use of an autopilot on the IMOCA was over 90% of the time. The use was partly because the boat was not well configured for hand steering, but also because the robot was better than humans in most conditions.

The extensive use of autopilots by solo sailors have fueled their development such that crewed teams can benefit, as The Ocean Race proved, but should their use trickle down to recreational sailing? The decision by the New York Yacht Club to allow autopilots for their 2025 Transatlantic Race prompted concerning comments:

Dawn Riley:
This is STRANGE, especially from these two very traditional clubs, and no fun at all!
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Andrew Burton:
A year or two ago Paul Cayard wrote an article for Seahorse lamenting the fact that autopilots would soon replace humans in races. To me, steering is of huge importance (and the most fun on deck) on a fully-crewed race boat. Sure, on a cloudy, rainy night it’s tough steering, but that’s how races are won; a good helmsman can figure it out.

If we’re going to let the autopilot drive, certainly we can automate everything else so we don’t have to risk getting cold and damp by actually sailing the boat personally. I think this move for the transatlantic is a bad one, Cayard was right on.
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Beau Vrolyk:
Right now, only the best helms-people can steer better than a high-end autopilot. As soon as a camera is placed on the front of the forward mast so that the autopilot can “see” the waves and anticipate the fastest possible route through them, it’s game over for human helms-people.

Heuristic software (AKA: “AI” or “Machine Learning”) will “learn” the optimums because it will have rapid and highly accurate information on Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Rate of Turn, Acceleration/ Deceleration, etc…. Indeed, it already has access to almost all that.

The one thing it CAN’T see or hear (yet!) is the wave that is about to impact the boat. Moreover, it can order the back-winding winches to pinch and ease the sail trim on every wave, just as the very best trimmers do. With appropriate winches it will “pump” the sails at precisely the legally permissible amount under the RRS on every wave.

The autopilot will almost certainly have night-vision, so it will be able to see things a human helms-person cannot. The “meat people”, to use a name from SciFi, will be out-sailed consistently by the “silicon people” who never get tired, seasick, or grumpy.

It’s pretty clear that this is going to happen, the technology is right on the verge of being introduced. The question is will it be “legal” in a sailboat race. The sport of sailing can follow many of the healthiest classes in sailing by limiting this stuff. Will it have the courage?
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Steve Mader:
We can just race sail drones.
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Nathaniel B Atwater Jr.:
It is a matter of time until boats wills be remote controlled…sad…