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Sheet to tiller steering

A

AlanH

compulsive typist
I scoffed. Yes, even though our own Andrew Evans is an advocate, I couldn't believe it would work.

But what the hell, you know? I set up the heavy weather jib with it's own wire forestay and made rope "hanks" and stashed them on the boat, bought some surgical tubing and figured I'd never use it.

That was until Monday night, when 180 miles out, my autopilot failed. Oh Joy.

However, I'd watched this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQNBlrg0VyI

and several others that illustrated using a line from the main boom, down to a block on the rail on the windward side of the boat, and then to the tiller. On the opposite side is a few wraps of surgical tubing, attached to a bit of line, which can be tightened around a cleat.

I had nothing to lose, so I set it up. It took a half hour-plus to adjust it and get it right, but damn if that setup didn't steer the Wildcat ALL NIGHT, on the third night of my qualifier....and the Wildcat is a "twitchy" boat. I have video...will post shortly.
 
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Turns out that I took video of halyard spaghetti in the cockpit floor instead. Grr....some more YouTube video's illustrating what I did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTY1JM8SGbw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA_NZg-Z_vU

Here's a little Monty 17, he's used a 2:1 tackle on the mainsheet to reduce the amount of movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQEQLG9bRyw

Here's Andrews video, which uses a more complex system running a storm jib set inside the working jib...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY1qx3PfUS0&t=44s

similar video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C54DCC5EPwM

I've tried this "storm jib" stuff once, with my heavy weather jib set on a wire stay inside my roller furling working jib and son of a gun, it was a lot of fussing around to set up but it worked. Well, it worked for the 20-25 minutes I had before I had to turn around and get back to the marina. I'll be testing it some more.

I can't claim that this is as accurate as a windvane or an autopilot, but if you have a boat with a tiller, the investment in $15 worth of surgical tubing gives you a couple of very good options, certainly a very good "get home" options and probably a lot better than that, should your autopilots pack it in, or your electrical system go belly-up.

Home Depot carries it. $13...

https://www.homedepot.com/p/UDP-1-4...c0&gclid=CKHQlOfd5usCFVVmfgoddVkILA&gclsrc=ds
 
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Well I'm just thrilled that you tried it out, and I'm even more thrilled that you tried it for the first time when you were 180 miles off shore and really needed it. I've always said that it's not hard to do. So it's not something you need to practice. Just keep a photocopy of those pages from my book on your boat for when you need it. I just wish that every member of SFBaySSS kept a piece of surgical tubing on their boat for just such a situation.

The difference between using the mainsail/main sheet instead of a separate storm jib is that you will lose drive power from the sail that you use to steer with. So I'd rather lose the drive power from a little storm jib than from my mainsail. But both work on exactly the same principle.
 
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