[Public-List] A Mighty Relief

[Gordon Laco]

Hello friends,

If any of you heard cursing coming from 44.7N 79.8W yesterday, that was me
tackling the replacement of SURPRISE¹s broken steering cable.  Last season
while racing I had to dive under a boat crossing us on starboard tack and
felt the wheel give a tug before catching again.  What ho, thought I, wire
cables can¹t stretch, I wonder what that was.... I tried not to think about
it, fearing bad news.  Later I gathered my courage and climbed down into the
cockpit locker to look at the cables...sure Œnuff, one had Œstranded¹.  The
7x19 wire had turned into 1 of 7x19; the other six having broken.  We became
a tiller steered boat for the rest of last season.

I patiently waited all winter hoping the steering cable would repair itself,
but when I and Sailor-Girl Caroline arrived yesterday morning with a trunk
load of tools, the damned thing had NOT repaired itself.  I figured that
we¹d delayed launching long enough so I gave up and decided to fix it
myself.

The geography under the cockpit of our apres-400 Alberg with her
factory-installed Edson wheel steering is set up with demonic genius.  One
can see things but can¹t reach them, other things that really must be
reached cannot be seen at all.  The longitudinal bulkheads under the cockpit
have two access squares cut, supposedly I suppose to facilitate getting at
the steering, but in reality only large enough to squint through, and two
smaller ones a bit forward.     How were we going to get the three hands
we¹d need to replace and secure the cable in there?

We started the job by cutting the access holes a little larger.  I used the
vertical zip tool we¹d used to cut  the cockpit sole open a few years ago
when doing the deck job.  Naturally the first set of bits I bought for it
were too large so we had to go back to the hardware store to exchange them
between the two return trips, standing in line, and doing the transactions,
we used up an hour.

Back at SURPRISE, we emptied the lockers and after carefully feeling around
to make sure I wasn¹t going to cut some wire or whatever along with the
wood, I enlarged the holes.  I could now reach an arm in each hole, with
enough room in the after one to look in at the same time.  However I
realized that there was no way I was going to be able to reach the cable
with cutters to finish the seperation of the bad cable.  At that point Bob,
who owns the marina, strolled by.  Trying to keep panic out of my voice I
said good morning then went right into asking if he¹d consider doing the job
for us if we failed.  Never ruffled, Bob said he would, but encouraged us to
keep at it and let him know how we did.

Something made me walk over to the car where  I bumped into our friend Rod
and after a brief conversation walked away with his dremel cutter kit.
Literally seconds after climbing back under the cockpit the cable was
cleanly cut.  FANTASTIC, thank you Rod!

The Girl and I climbed back up into the cockpit and now addressed the issue
of pulling the cable out of the binnacle.  For those who haven¹t seen the
insides of one of these, the binnacle has a sprocket inside which is driven
by the steering wheel.  Over the sprocket is draped a motorcycle chain which
is nicropressed to the 7x19 wire steering cables.  We locked the brake on
the wheel to hold the sprocket, and put a screw driver through a link of
chain with a vice grip clamped on it to keep top dead centre. (very clever,
I told myself).  We used the dremel again to cut off the bad cable.  We
nicro pressed on the new cable after measuring it out against the old one.
Yes, I know, we should have replaced both cables, but at this point I didn¹t
yet know if we would be successful in fixing a termination to the quadrant
end of the cable we were doing, so I didn¹t have the courage to cut the
Œgood¹ one too.   At this point, hours into the job, we still didn¹t know if
it was all going to turn out well.

I should add that a howling 25-30 knot wind was blowing ­ it was screaming
in the rigs of the boats around us and raising clouds of gritty dust.
Halyards were frantically slapping, the tarp of a boat nearby was flogging,
any rags or paper towels we set down instantly blew away.  We had to raise
our voices to be heard.  There was a feeling of tension and impending
disaster in the air.

Back to the job.   We then pushed the cut end of the new cable down the
binnacle while Caroline lay on top of the engine to catch the end and guide
it through the sheaves at the fwd end of the system.  We then moved back
into the cockpit lockers and rove the wire through the after sheaves and
across the quadrant.    With moderate difficulty we hauled the wire taut and
fitted a three bulldog wire clamps on and snugged them very tight.  We
tensioned up the bolt, and the job was done.

This is a longish email, and took you about three minutes to read it.... But
to do what this message described took from 9am till 3pm to complete.  I was
ready to give up several times during the day ­ however Caroline was of
sterner stuff and provided steady encouragement, good advice (she¹s an
engineer¹s daughter), a quick hand passing tools and reaching into places my
arm wouldn¹t fit.  Thank you Caroline!

However, the wire is replaced.  The wheel retained the same top-dead-centre
orientation it had.  The rudder turns the correct way when the wheel is
turned.  Done, Done, Done.  Well not quite, I still have to grease the new
cable but after what we¹ve been through, that¹s nothin¹....

What a relief.

Gord #426 SURPRISE