L'Eau Commotion Westabout

Day 167 5pm Thursday 21st November 2019 ( UTC-4 )
I was just gearing myself up to tackle the arduous task of stitching up the main when I noticed that our course was falling away to Port. A glance at the tiller lines showed OK so harness on and down to the blunt or business end and there it was - the auxiliary tiller had snapped off. And this was the spare as I had already lost the other one due to carelessness on my part in a gale round Good Hope. I hadn't secured it high enough and it dipped under in a wave and snapped off the casting which with its bolt would normally allow the tiller to kick up. I wasn't too concerned at the time as I had two autopilots and the Watt & Sea to provide the oomph so I fastened a couple of boards with bolts by drilling through what was left of the casting and bolted on the spare. Not pretty but it has done most of the steering from the Equator Northbound and back. The new plywood tiller is made from one of the mattress supports in the quarter berth so a replacement had to be fabricated from lighter ply and of course all the stores there had to be sorted and rearranged. I deliberately made it a bit shorter and little wider to cut down the bending force and it looks like it's working in the so far light breeze. So tomorrow the first job is to start stitching up the main.



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