Steering Uh-Oh

[sabray]

I thought I would share this and yes it's my fault. Right now im not sure what failed but it did. Had great success sanding and getting the outboard into rehab. So I'm thinkin let's sail. It's blowun pretty good here. So off we go first reef in and staysl set. Sail right off the mooring and get cruisin real fancy. Just fine sailng. Gusts are hitting 30 and the boat is just wonderful. I begin playing with trim and am thinking I'll practice heaving to.so up we go jib sheeted in boat is coming up clunk uhh clunk thinks me is not in this schedule. What is clunk thinks the aged mind. Meanwhile the boat she ain't pointin up shes fallin off. So she falls off. Aged one thinks I'm not steering I don't have rspinse here no resistance in the wheel. I have to credit my slowness with the idea that boat was balanced so well the loss of helm was hardly noticabke. Sabray now is sailing well off the wind. Oh well thinks the dull helmsman. I've rehersed this the brand new cable you made just failed. No it couldn't I've checked that twice. There wasn't slack. Any way on goes the auto pilot I'm thinking okay we rebuilt the emergency tiller that's good I know how to fit that up. Auto pilot goes into alarm auto pilot uhhh it's not working. Off go the cushions and panels that cover the steering gear. I'm thinking Now I'm going to use that damn emergency tiller. I jeep popping my head topside cause I'm single handing. Still have good room so it's back to uhh this boat doesn't have an operational rudder. Which gets us back to one reason I was sailing. Honey I promise thus was work and I needed to test some stuff. So yeah I balance the sails but why won't the rudder respond. Clunk the cable isn't broken in fact it has decent tension. Uhh get the tension off the cable now up on the engine room I disconnect the cable.Now that it's slack the auto pilot can push the rudder without fighting the cable tension. There we go got the boat so the auto pilot wasn't pushing against that resistance. Off we go fir the neared anchorage. Meanwhilie I'm tearing into the binnacle. Having done this before I mean tearing up the binacle not loosing the helm all the bolts came loosewith efficiant ease. There lies the root of my problem the chain jumped it's. Cog when the auto pilot took over the cog jammed and tensioned the cable thus the rudder couldn't turn. I've sailed this set up sone 3000 miles tomorrow will be a day of reconning. How did that fail. Today my head is low I designed this thing. I had thought through a cable failure but hadn't thought about the linkage jamming in the edson pedestal. That jamming causes the rudder to be limited.a good test not the one I was seeking especially with such great sailing. The emergency tiller set up got notched up on my list of to does. I can't imagine trying to steer from the aft cabin with 0 fwd visability. At the end I'm up a creek now with the hook set about to dig down into that cog that mucked up my sail.

[Ex-Calif]

Sometimes simpler is just, well, simpler...

Glad you found the problem so quick. The solution may be daunting...

[roverhi]

Don't you justy lovre wheel steering!!!

[sabray]

I think the cable and chain was off center . Dumb oops. About the only thing I can think is that the rudder went hard over and the chain went clear off the cog before it hit the stops. Seems okay now. otherwise one of my splices slipped or the cable got stretched which may be more likely. I use amsteel on the cable part and I have found that it needs to be tensioned the first few sails. Although I've been good about that I didn't check it before my spur of the moment cruise. Bugger now I'm going to look at that emergency tiller set up to see if that can't be improved. Still a fan of using amsteel in place of stainless cable .

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by sabray

I can't imagine trying to steer from the aft cabin with 0 fwd visability.

Did I read that right, your emergency steering is located in an aft cabin and doesn't extend above the deck when rigged

Pete

[sabray]

Yeah kind of. I didn't write that very well though. There is a hatch above the aft cabin bunk. So you have to open the hatch and then you can see but the purchase on the tiller isn't optimal from that stance. It would not be optimal in it's current set up. With the aft companionway open I can see the sail set. So its not really blind. I saw one Peterson where the rudder shat was extended through the aftbunk up to the deck. But then you have pole through the middle of the bunk. Were the misses several feet shorter or the deck raised many feet it could make for an intersting evening. As it is the wife isn't getting shorter of anything but patience and the house sides aren't going any where. I'm thinking about a stainless cross bar with amsteel on the outer tips. The line could be rigged to run to the cockpit and fed around the spare winchs.