Taling 33 - EMERGENCY - We lost our steering

“We lost our steering! Our quadrant broke…”

@sailingblackmoon on August 30, 2022:

We lost our steering! Our quadrant brokhttps://www.instagram.com/sailingmillennialfalcon/e -this triangle connects the steering wheel with the rudder. This could have gone wrong in so so so many ways.

Unfortunately at that moment we were at the Tuamotus – the most remote islands you can imagine…

Fortunately we discovered it in time and in calm conditions. Also we are so luckely to have a Hydrovane – this selfsteering system has his own rudder. So while sailing we always fixate our main rudder and let the hydrovane steer – which adapt it self on the wind.

We even used it as an emergency rudder while motoring. Also we attached a poke on the little helm to steer more controlled to anchor. We fixated the crack with a piece of stainless steel and the quadrant itself with a vicegrip. Kudos to Niels for macguyvering this all 💪

This way we made it safely to Tahiti to fix or even replace the quadrant. After 3 weeks back and forth with several machine shops there was no way to make a new one, but finally we found someone willing to weld it and he did a super job! Now it’s time for the big test 🤞