Daily Report #25

Dear Salt Handed People,

Salt, salt, salt.

Well, when you're on a boat in the middle of the ocean you want a few things. The essentials are, float, steer, mechanical propulsion and wind propulsion, water to drink and food to eat. Sleeping is also important, but if you are tired enough, you will.
And now we have (had) a problem with something essential. Sending.
We have a steering wheel on a steering column that moves the rudder through a number of transmissions (gearboxes and coupling rods).
We also have an automatic steering system that moves the rudder by means of a pump and steering cylinder.
We have a separate windvane steering gear on the back of the transom.
And we have an emergency steering system that is mounted directly on the rudder stock.
Enough options to send.
We have already had a lot of hassle with the steering column steering system. The steering column itself was always loose, after tinkering with it a number of times we got it back together by replacing the rotten wood base it appeared to be standing on with steel spacers.
But when we switched to automatic steering, there was a kink in it that hindered automatic steering. We have therefore avoided automatic steering to prevent further problems. Then you move on to fixing the rudder in a way to allow the windvane to keep the ship on course and it worked out just fine. The disadvantage, however, is that a lot of forces are then exerted on the gears of the BG30/MK2 reduction gearbox of the Lewmar Mamba steering position in particular. See pictures on the internet! This is especially the case with downwind courses because the ship is then difficult to trim and becomes quite stingy windward. And if the sea is also rough and the wind is strong, you make considerable yaw movements that are all absorbed by the reduction box.
And to think that if you switch to automatic steering, the 24V hydraulic B&G pump and steering cylinder will steer the rudder directly and then take the entire Lewmar steering system with it. Then you can see the steering wheel turning by itself all the time. A thorn in my side.
In the end, the play in the shafts of the reduction gearbox turned out to be so great that a few teeth were skipped with a lot of noise and the steering wheel turned out to be off-center.
Then we disconnected the coupling rod from the reduction box with the steering rod on the rudder stock to prevent further damage (below deck) and installed the emergency steering tiller.
The Lewmar steering gear is therefore out of order. We now steer with the tiller (old and trusted) and the windvane. Still on a downwind course. For God's sake still.
An advantage is that the machine is now relieved of an enormous burden and steers happily and seemingly effortlessly compared to before.
In fact, we think that the whole situation has improved. The tiller is mounted directly on the rudder stock. And with strings and pulleys we have good steering control.
However, we want to have an extra emergency steering tiller manufactured as soon as possible, some things you better have two. Hopefully that can be done in Reunion.
So we're still sailing (behind the wind (sigh)) and we're still going pretty well but there's work to be done that I'm waiting to do and I don't like that..
From a construction point of view I would say that the column steering is better done with a hydraulic system because the forces on the installation in certain weather conditions are simply gigantic with that huge unbalanced rudder. That is of course only important if you are going to cruise deep water with this boat, which is now the curious case. You can't afford any slack on the reduction gearbox. With hydraulics you can still opt for safety valves that relieve the load and bypass valves that switch off the steering column when the automatic hydraulics are used for steering. Seems much better to me. It's a mystery to me why Herr Hiller didn't choose that. After all, he also sailed halfway around the world with this boat. And then probably only sailed day trips. All considerations that follow the failure of a part. For which we have found a solution again.
Fortunately, we keep the courage together. We sleep reasonably well and morale is good.

Which brings us to the Indian Ocean. We can safely say that we have not encountered anyone yet. No cargo ships, no sailing ships heading for Reunion, no airplanes, UFOs or other alien life. Nothing. Probably all chased away by the salt water and the constant easterly wind.

Grt T and M.