Emergency Tiller Location

[Hobie1]

After 3 years of planning and searching we finally pulled the trigger on our first cruising boat, a 1999 Beneteau 411. This weekend we began to inventory the boat creating the to-do-list beside what the survey indicated. One thing I could not locate was the emergency tiller. The owners manual talks about the importance of one and running drills with the crews but it does not tell you where to find it on the boat. I know during my long research of boats I did see a layout showing its specific location on a 411 but for the life of me can not locate that document either. Can anyone help?

[boatman61]

It should be in your cockpit locker, likely buried under fenders etc.. something like this..

[Quebramar]

Mine is under the berth in the aft cabin (center cockpit), easy to retrieve as we don’t store our fenders or ropes there [emoji6] so you may want to search for a similar easy accessible spot.

[JPA Cate]

Perhaps your boat doesn't already have an emergency tiller. If it ever did. Perhaps a thorough search will locate one, perhaps not. If not, see about getting one, and then figure out a location where it will be easy to stow, and remember, and get to. We used to stow ours inboard in our forwardmost port settee locker; this boat's is permanently mounted. [She started out tiller steered, but later, the PO installed a wheel.]

Hope you get it sorted out soon.

Ann

[Hobie1]

Thanks to everyone who responded so far. I did the scrounging search once and will do it again. I cannot get this picture in my mind that there is a dedicated place where the mfg mounted it.
Would not being giving it much thought but last October sailing south on the CHP Bay in a friend's C&C 37 the chain & cable broke 30 minutes above the bay bridge. We limped into Rock Hall but I learned the importance of you need to know where it is.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by boatman61

It should be in your cockpit locker, likely buried under fenders etc.. something like this..

Yikes! If it looks anything like that example, if you find it, please be sure to seriously try it out... actually sailing with it (possibly with wheel removed to reduce friction and inertial loads).

That POS looks pretty incompetent to me, and from conversations with others, the OEM tillers are often jokes, just to fulfil some rule somewhere, and are not seriously meant to drive the boat at sea. (And w here else is the steering likely to fail?)

Jim

[psk125]

We had to use our emergency tiller once, racing, reaching in a 20 knot breeze with three foot seas. It is a substantial piece of hardware on our boat, but we found out that the wheel keeps it from being long enough to make steering at all easy. Tackles P & S would have helped. Luckily we got the cables tightened up and working again after about a half hour of fiddling around under the cockpit.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Yikes! If it looks anything like that example, if you find it, please be sure to seriously try it out... actually sailing with it (possibly with wheel removed to reduce friction and inertial loads).

That POS looks pretty incompetent to me, and from conversations with others, the OEM tillers are often jokes, just to fulfil some rule somewhere, and are not seriously meant to drive the boat at sea. (And w here else is the steering likely to fail?)

Jim

The one I had on a wheel steering boat was also a joke.. from where it fitted one had no view and the tiller was a stub impossible to steer with, to short to handle the loads..
However it did force me to jury a fix to get me to port using a couple of circlips and a crushed finger from the efforts..
Why dya think I prefer tillers on my boats..

[dfelsent]

Moonbeam has a substantial emergency tiller. I am grateful for that.

My sabre 38 had an oem emergency tiller that had poor leverage. And a custom emergency tiller with much better leverage and eyes for lines.

I had to use that tiller when the chain on the wheel steering snapped. And the autopilot was out of commission. In the middle of a jib hoist and spinnaker takedown at a mark in 20 knots of breeze.

A solid below deck rudder shaft mounted autopilot is a great first try before getting the tiller out. My bad not having that working that day.

I also had a tiller steered 30’ boat when the tiller snapped. At the fitting. That was a pain in the .... Instead of a 3 foot tiller I had a 1 foot tiller.

[Dusty Mac]

One thing I would suggest is if the emergency tiller goes through the deck to the rudder post, manufacture a bushing to hold the tiller steady.

Racing to Hawaii, the quadrant broke and we went to the emergency tiller while hooking up the emergency steering gear. The tiller was fine but it took two people to use it to alleviate the slop so that you could steer. When i got home I made a bushing for my emergency steering.

On my Sabre 362 the emergency tiller is clipped horizontally to the wall inside the lazarette.