My meridian vs the southernmost point of the Lower 48
Month: June 2022
Rod End!!
This means little to all y’all, but the lovely Nicole at Raymarine sent me a replacement Rod End for my Autohelm. The original is stuck in a lump of old tiller arm:
I should have ignored the surveyor report and just left the tiller arm well alone: crappy it was, but in a million years it was never going to fail. But… I meddled.
So now I have my new (totally different) tiller arm, which means a lot of hard work to retro fit it:
But – at least I have a new Rod End!
Doldrums for the GSC.
Only One Choice of boats for a race around Antarctica. Sadler 34.
Autohelm Tiller Arm.
If my Hydrovane is a 1st mate, then the Autohelm is 2nd Mate – or at least a talented Cabin Boy!
I have no idea if my old version can be upgraded to work with the as-yet-uninstalled new Raymarine radar system. I’m assuming not.
Back in November 2015 the control head was deluged by a freak wave halfway across the Bay of Biscay (I know..what else happens on a sailboat? But there we have it!) and burned out, leaving me to handhold Frank to Camariñas in a (what else in November?) storm. Parking up in the aforesaid fishing port for Christmas, I returned to Texas and found a new unit on ebay.
But at the other end of the Autopilot, attached to the Type 1 hydraulic ram, is an arm. This connects the ram to the tiller shaft. It was still working, but badly corroded. Here is is after I managed to get it off:
And here is the new one!
The hole for the tiller shaft has been machined to 1.25″, but the key is not uniform to 3 decimal places (it has had a hard life..) so I took the arm without a keyway cut. I’ll have to find a shop to get it machined.
This tiller arm is bronze and weighs maybe 10-15 pounds. Slow progre$$, but progre$$.
frankjustfrank 