Emergency tiller.

[BlueSkyNick]

Being a centre cockpit boat (Moody 346), buried under the berth in the aft cabin is a scaffold pole with a square socket on the end. This is the disaster recovery system for the Whitlock steering, otherwise known as the emergency tiller.

Each time I see it I think " Mmmm, I ought to try that out one day" then forget about it 5 seconds later.

In emergency, I assume it is mounted on the square drive directly on top of the rudder mount inside the cabin (sorry for crap jargon), and then I stick my head out through the hatch to see where we are going.

It would be nice to know what to expect - have others tried sailing with the emergency tiller as a practice? Better still, has anybody actually used it in anger?




<hr width=100% size=1>Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

 

[Redmond]

Snaped my tiller in a 7 and hat to fit the spare. Not suprisingly the holes didnt line up so we had to drill them. I had a large strong crew but it was very time consuming. The main lesson was, and I have heard it from others is that emergency tillers are short and the loads very high. You might even need a block and tackle.

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[jamesjermain]

Tried it as an exercise on my wheel-steered Scanmar 33. It was extremely heavy mainly due to short length (just over a foot), but laso due to having to drag the rod linkage as well. In th event of a steering failure it is likely the linkage will no longer be attached so it will be lighter.

In a Moody it is almost impossible to steer and keep a proper look out. You need two people - rather like a big ship - one on deck shouting orders to the helmsman below. It's well worth a bit of practice.

On some boats the tiller fits on pointing backwards which requires a bit of getting used to.

<hr width=100% size=1>JJ

 

[pandroid]

Its a similar arrangement on our HR, where the 'tiller' slots on top of the rudder in the aft cabin, and you steer with your foot, whilst standing with your head out of the rear hatch to see where you are going!

HOWEVER

The autopilot acts directly on the rudder quadrant, so a far better method is ignore all that and to steer using the autopilot.

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[chas]

I measured mine up and I think I can rig a whipstaff using a boathook pivoted on the after hatch casing. This would solve the problem of being unsighted. I have not tried it yet!

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[global_odyssey]

Just to make the exercise more realistic, (in a S*d's Law kind of way), what would happen if you had simultaneous electrical failure... or if the actual rudder fell off?

<hr width=100% size=1>I've got wind......................
...............................in my sails!

 

[claymore]

I fitted a hatch in the coachroof of the aft cabin and with some careful bending of pipes I can now steer from on deck. Previously I'd tried steering from the aft cabin which was a complete non-starter. Claymore has hydraulic steering so you have to remember which valves to open and which to shut but I reckon I could get myself out of a reasonable amount of trouble with this arangement

<hr width=100% size=1>regards
Claymore
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[mike_bryon]

In an Italian yachting magazine called 'Bolina' someone is advertising a steering oar that seems heavy duty with it own dedicated deck bracket. It might be just the job on smallish yachts. I would be happy to look up contact details. I have no relationship with the company or other knowledge of the product but it might be worth further investigation

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[Rich_F]

My boat (29ft) came with the following

- A pre-drilled sheet of ply (aka spare rudder)
- Brackets to mount the ply to the spinnaker pole
- No obvious way of steering the boat with the resultant contraption

So now, in the event of rudder loss, I'll probably lose the spinnaker pole as well!

Rich

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[robp]

My Benny CC has a winch handle removable plate on the afterdeck and a long tiller arm. However I'm fairly sure that the cables would have to be removed/cut off the quadrant! This sort of precludes experimenting.

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[steve_cronin]

I watched an incident....

..in April last year when a charter boat had just been handed over to a young crew.

The Whitlock cable and chain steering suffered a cable parting and the helm went hard over under the influence of prop wash. The charter company's fleet manager spotted the panic and was able to clamber on board from the bow of another boat as the casualty circled slowly. The boat a 47 GibSea aft cockpit had an emergency tiller a little like mine, a stainless square tube with a cranked short handle. Problem was though that the stock was under an aluminium circular cap pushed into a perspex plate and the sea had corroded the cap into position. There were charter boats departing in all directions being a saturday lunchtime. The brave soul took a winch handle to it and proceeded to smash the perspex to smithareens and eventually regained control despite bouncing off a couple of other boats (we were about 35 metres away so weren't involved) The charter crew just stood watching and made no attempt to fend off.

I nipped down below quickly, dug #2 son and girlfriend out of their cabin to make a very detailed inspection of our steering gear which is of the same layout and manufacture. All was Ok but it just shows you that JJ's advice is sound - do a dry run before you have to do it in earnest. Only trouble is, how many people, deprived of enough sailing time as it is are going to go to the trouble of disconnecting the steering and turn their boats into something that looks like a narrowboat. Would they know how to re-tension the wire afterwards?

Larry Pardey always said that he would have nothing other than a tiller no matter what size the boat. Sound decision maybe!

Steve Cronin

<hr width=100% size=1>The above is, like any other post here, only a personal opinion

 

[jimboaw]

A few years back my wife and I were playing with the spinnaker off the coast of Brittany aboard our "new" (to us) Fjord 33MS. Me on the foredeck SWMBO on the helm. Kite up and all of a sudden off course. Needless to say I was less than polite to her claim that "the wheel won't work" but she was telling the truth. The arm that the hydrolic steering ram attached to had sheared from the rudder stock. Recovered the kite,dropped the main and searched high and low for the emergency tiller to no avail. Scratch heads time. The top of the rudder stock had a threaded hole no doubt for the purpose of attatching the missing tiller but of course I coud not find a bolt that was a perfect fit so with a large hammer I managed to persuade a bolt to go in 3 or 4 treads deep and then used a 1/2 drive socket set handle to steer the boat the 4 miles to shore. Hard work!! and turns to stb. caused problems.
The guy who did the repair for 500 francs told me the problem had been caused by a weld between two different grades of stainless and the broken arm clearly showed corrosion on 3/4 of the weld so it had been about to let go for some time. I wonder why my expensive surveyor did'nt spot it the month before??
My current boat has a real heavy duty emergency tiller and we have a compass in the aft cabin should we ever have to use it!!

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[snowleopard]

i had to use jury steering when my rudder quadrant sheared 400m sw of ireland. the emergency tiller fitted onto a square on the top of the stock and required helmsman to be in the aft cabin. for most of the 600 miles home i steered by sail balance but was able to bring her into chichester harbour and anchor by standing in the aft cabin hatch and steering with one leg.

my present boat has hydraulic steering (2 rudders, 2 rams) and can be steered with the emergency tiller on either rudder stock but it takes a lot of force to turn against the resistance of the hydraulics (you have to open a valve to allow the fluid to bypass the steering pump).

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[MainlySteam]

We have an emergency tiller which is very short (but set up so the secondary winches can be used) as the stock is close behind the steering pedestal. With the autopilot and the drag link from the pedestal both independantly available for steering the only point of common failure is the short tiller bar on the stock or the rudder itself being damaged.

Also an aquaintance recently completed an ocean voyage with no rudder (the stock failed flush with the bottom of the boat) so the emergency tiller was of no use. They very successfully used a towed drogue for steering in a shallow canoe draft, flat bottom sections, fin keeled boat.

Putting those things together, if we were ever unfortunate enough to lose steering, my first reaction would be to not use the emergency tiller but use sail trim and a towed drogue.

John

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[gunnarsilins]

On my Moody 42 (aft cockpit) they made the same construction, a square socket and the pole made of galvanized steel and rather high and with a long 'arm' to get enough leverage. The head of the rudder stock can be accessed through a removable cover.
I tried it once just to see how it works, which it did, but the square socket is too short and not a tight fit, so as soon I released the grip on the 'tiller' the whole thing fell on its side and off the rudder stock.
This is probably managable in an emergency, but I don´t envy you fiddling around with a similar thing inside the aft cabin.

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[Sybarite]

It has happened to me in a brand new charter boat (Sunshine from memory) with plastic covers still on seats.

We were out in blow F6/7 from La Rochelle and the chain linkage broke (the locking pin hadn't been secured). We had an emergency tiller with us and were able to set it up quickly - we had a lee shore not too far away.

We took it back to the charter company who fixed it by reversing the linkage! You can imagine what it is like reversing out of a narrow marine berth with a wheel turning the wrong way !

John

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[Dominic]

You Won´t Believe This

I had the wheel hub keyway shear in a F9 off Casablanca. It took 45 seconds to fit the tiller but the "helm" had to shout down to the aft cabin "left a bit", "hard right" etc.

It then took 15 minutes to strip the wheel, file a new keyway, cut a bit of allen key and hammer it in. (During this my 5 year old daughter climbed up into the cockpit and asked for a peanut butter sandwhich - What are one´s prorities ?)

I have also had - while teaching - the throttle cable snap twice. Each time I just tied a bit of string on to the lever on the injector pump, led it up to the cockpit and manoevered into the berth with the helmsman on steering and gears and a "throttle-man" on string pulling/releasing.

Finally I have had the gear cable snap. So I placed one child down below on the gear box and called down for forward, neutral or reverse as required - just remember to put the throttle in idle before calling for a gear change.

Shades of engine room telegraphs and brass bells.

It is worth while using those long dull night watches to think and plan through how you cope with these types of failures - and then practising it just for laughs.

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[RelaxedatSea]

We lost steering in a bit of blow. The pig was that we had that the heavily reefed jib rip in half about 2 minutes before- Oh and the heads exploded about 2 minutes after. Some days you just wish for dry land.

Get some practice with the real thing. It is really heavy to use, especially in a blow.


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