Find your emergency tiller - Page 2

doctom · #11 (**permalink**) 05-10-2007

does anyone have an opinion on whether it is it advisable or even possible to set up a windvane for self steering to my emergency tiller setup? the position of my helm, winches and coaming will have to make for some pretty intricate line setup to get a windvane to my wheel....but would be exceedingly simple to get to a aft pointing tiller....

mike

sailingdog · #12 (**permalink**) 05-10-2007

Dotcom-

It would help if you said what kind of boat you had... without that... it makes it pretty hard to guess if anything will work. BTW, probably better off starting a new thread just for that... this one was pretty dead.

Joel73 · #13 (**permalink**) 05-15-2007

As another newbie around here i found this thread quite interesting... a good one to revive because of safety. We don't have an emergency tiller so that has become the next project... I wonder what kinds of wood i should consider? Oak is good and solid... would that be a good choice?

SVDistantStar · #14 (**permalink**) 05-15-2007

This is one of the downsides of the location of my pedistal(i know i cant spell). It has been moved far aft in my cockpit, rendering a tiller un-useable. My boat is a Pearson 36, and they have a pedistal in the front of the cockpit from the factory. Im going to move it back to this spot and make a tiller for the rudder. The top of my rudder shaft is square and there is a large deckplate above it to access it. I hate it when people change things around and dont even think of whats going to come from it.

sailingdog · #15 (**permalink**) 05-15-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joel73

As another newbie around here i found this thread quite interesting... a good one to revive because of safety. We don't have an emergency tiller so that has become the next project... I wonder what kinds of wood i should consider? Oak is good and solid... would that be a good choice?

You could easily make the rudder out of pipe stock...since it is an emergency tiller it would probably make far more sense to make it out of something that won't degrade in storage. Most wood tillers will eventually need far more maintenance, and being a piece of emergency gear, it will probably be out of sight/out of mind...and fail to get it.

abbarr · #16 (**permalink**) 05-15-2007

Out of sight out of mind is a great reason to check on the state of your emergency tiller. When I checked it on a friend's boat, prior to cruising up the coast, i found that the coupling had deteriorated to the point of being completely useless. It was one of the first things I put to the test on my boat.

Joel73 · #17 (**permalink**) 05-15-2007

SD- Great idea and maybe easier to make than a wooden copy of my current tiller. thanks.

sailingdog · #18 (**permalink**) 05-15-2007

Glad to help Joel. Save the pretty laminated wood for a tiller that's going to see the light of day in normal use...

teshannon · #19 (**permalink**) 05-24-2007

I took EscapeArtist's excellent advice and rigged the emergency till on my Tayana 42 yesterday. Ah, that is a lovely chartplotter I had installed! If I punch a hole through it I could probably get that tiller rigged. Actually, given the aft location of my helm I don't think the tiller would have worked even without the plotter. The only way I can rig it, without cutting it down to an unusable length, is with the tiller out to port or starboard. I haven't tried to stear it that way yet but it seems to me the helm interfering with the tiller issue is probably not unique to my boat.
Excellent advice from EA and others, you don't want to be finding suprises when you really need it.
Tom Shannon
S/V Orion

Giulietta · #20 (**permalink**) 05-24-2007

I don't have an emergency tiller...