Day 14 Position Report 34 55.945 S 178 14.08 E 1200NZT
Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Thu 15 Mar 2012 22:07
|
Almost there ..............or
are we read
on!!! Yesterday evening
I was hand steering with the asymmetrical sail up and all of a sudden I couldn’t
steer the boat anywhere, the steering wheel seemed to be disconnected from the
rudder. After further investigation I identified that the Lewmar steering wheel does not
have the correct boss fitted to it to match the shaft coming out of the
pedestal.
The shaft coming
out of the pedestal is parallel for about 50 mm and then goes into an 20° degree
taper at the very end next to the nut that secures the steering wheel. The
problem being that the bore in the steering wheel boss is parallel and the key
way in the shaft does not fit correctly as it is working off a tapered shaft. I
recommend that a new mounting boss for the wheel is sourced and the old one
replaced so that manual steering can be assured without and hiccups. In the mean
time I managed to fix the problem with a little chewing gum, gaffer tape and
some string...i think it will
hold!
At 2034 hrs yesterday we
crossed the date line to NZ
time. We are on our final approach to the Colville
channel which is about 154 nms off at the moment, we have very light winds and
are motor sailing at the moment, fuel reserves are pretty low but I'm more than
happy we will make it on what we have
left. Here’s the boring stuff! in the last hrs we covered
149 nms covered and have 197.5 nms until we reach Auckland
wharfs. Cheers Mark |