Help required - Emergency Tiller

[bedouin]

One of the requirements of ORC special regulations is that I must carry "an emergency tiller capable of being fitted to the rudder stock" (in addition to being able to steer the boat without the rudder).

I've never seen anything like that for sale - so how do I go about making one?

As a subsidiary question. My existing tiller is a pretty substantial affair re-inforced with heavy stainless steel sections at the rudder stock. Can anyone imagine circumstances that could damage that without causing terminal damage to the rest of the mechanism?

 

[Twister_Ken]

If you've got a tiller, you don't require an emergency one. The emergency tiller rule is for wheel steered chariots, full of nasty vulnerable cables and quadrants.

Notwithstanding the foregoing (as they say at the Bar Yacht Club), you might want to consider, m'lud, how you'd steer your conveyance if your girder of a tiller ever did succumb to biodegradation.

 

[vyv_cox]

I carry an all-stainless steel tiller that I had made locally. It's fairly crude but strong and didn't cost a lot. Its main use is as a replacement when we leave the boat, as my very pretty wooden tiller suffers from rain and has twice developed traces of rot.

 

[Guest]

The ORC regs are quite clear. Unless you have a metal tiller you must carry a spare one. It is relatively easy to rig somthing up that will bolt through your existing rudder stock. I assume that your wooden tiller has a metal shroud that is bolted through a block.

Measure the block and get a local metal shop to make something up. Remember its a "get you home" device for when your brother in law falls off the cockpit seat and breaks your wooden one. (hopefully it will break brother in law's ribs too!)

 

[oldharry]

brother in law - or mother in law??? nm