Deltaville Marina: Part 3
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| Trying to check the Nav when it's bucketing |
Dodger Side Curtains. We had had made for us, some years ago in the
Caribbean, side curtains of shade cloth
for the bimini – I have written about them before in glowing terms. Between the bimini and dodger there is also a
joining piece and there are side curtains for that as well. These particular side curtains are great but
don’t keep out the sea when bashing to windward, for example. So I made some sunbrella screens that we clip
onto these side curtains when sailing in wet weather – they did the job and
kept out a lot of water that would otherwise have wet us in the cockpit. |
| All hands use the canvas machine... |
Locking the Steering
Wheel. We have a Hydrovane wind vane
self-steering gear that steers the boat all by itself and the main rudder
steering is locked. I have a steering
lock as part of the wheel steering arrangement and, to be frank, it has never
worked well ie it’s pretty weak and one can fairly easily turn the wheel by
hand. You also have to rotate the knob on
the break which is very slow to take up.
I therefore came up with a block and tackle arrangement, quite light
weight as the steering is quite light, which I will try to describe here.
I attached with chord a block with cam cleat to each side of
the steering wheel and shackled two other blocks (one for each side) to a u
bolt that I bolted to the cockpit floor at the middle base of the steering
pedestal. I ran lines connecting the
respective blocks at the bottom of the pedestal
to the blocks on each side of the steering wheel. I could lock the steering wheel centrally in
an instant by using the cam cleats and, just as easily, make slight adjustments
to the wheel to allow, for example, weather helm. All this is necessary to balance the boat as
best you can so that Mr Hydrovane can steer the boat with his (much smaller)
rudder. It is also easy to disconnect
the steering lock and steer the boat using the wheel if, say, you need to
manoeuvre quickly to avoid something.
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| With the Hydrovane fitted, ready for some blue water action |
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| Though not all the crew were taking this up-coming voyage (Atlantic Crossing) seriously.. |
