Ahoy all,

At 0900hrs this morning the main steering quadrant failed–it sheared in two places and is need of a good welder. We rigged up the emergency tiller which we centred, and are steering using the Hydrovane. This works very well considering–we are using the manual bilge pump handle as a tiller and we’re steering from the “hen bench”. It’s much the same as steering a small outboard motor in a dinghy. Before the incident,we were having a fine sail straight downwind before a 25 kt following breeze,
but have reverted to motoring for ease of handling.

So we are now proceeding directly to Atuona for repairs, and expect to arrive tomorrow in the late afternoon. Fatu Hiva will have to wait for another time.

There are a numerous things that are on our side. Firstly, the Hydrovane makes steering much more manageable, instead of trying to steer from the bowels of the vessel. Secondly, we are only 145nm from a safe harbour, and most probably a good welder/mechanic. Thirdly, and most importantly, the failure occurred well away from land where we could sort things out in an orderly fashion, trying different steering techniques until we found the best combination. And lastly, after a wicked night of strong squalls, the skies cleared this morning in fine tradewind fashion. Landfall tomorrow morning.

The Crew of the Goodship MADHATTER

~

From: Winlink
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 5:38 PM
To: John Curry
Subject: Hydrovane saved our Bacon!

Just a quick note. We are in unbelievably lush Hiva Oa, 22 days from the Galapagos. WOW! Anyway, the last day, our steering quadrant broke. We don’t know why. We were able to fit the emergency tiller, and lock the main rudder. We then steered Madhatter from the after deck using the Hydrovane for the last 30 hours into Hiva Oa. Another success story for your product!

I am however worried about flexing of the transom at the attachment point of the lower Hydrovane mount, which was quite notible hand steering. I think the solution will be an A-bracket.

Another plus- our bilge pump handle fit perfectly into the Hydrovane tiller, allowing us to extend the tiller, which was critical to successful hand steering. Was this planned?
We will write in more detail later.

John

John’s brother Pat on Hydrovane’s emergency tiller – saved them from untold misery when main rudder quadrant broke 145 miles from the Marquesas.