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Daria Blackwell - 6/24/2019

Dick, you are so right. When we were first getting acquainted with Aleria, our Bowman 57, we went through every piece of gear aboard and studied how to deploy it when necessary. Naturally, an emergency tiller would be useful to get at quickly. But when looking at ours and trying to fit it, we realized we would have to be steering from under the berth in our aft cabin, periodically sticking our heads out the hatch to check on things happening on deck. Not an ideal situation. 

That's when we decided that the Monitor windvane steering system, with its emergency rudder configuration, would be a good backup system for us. And so we fitted the Monitor which we love. Fortunately, we have not needed to deploy it despite losing steering - twice - mid-Atlantic. Because of our sail configuration (cutter ketch), we can balance Aleria exceedingly well. While I stayed on deck and steered the boat by adjusting sails, Alex worked on the steering. The first time, a gearbox had seized; many hours of greasing and manual persuasion finally managed to loosen it. We have rod steering and several gearboxes. We had called into our Atlantic crossing net via SSB and several yachts diverted to our position to assist if needed, but we got lucky. Fortunately, it held until Grenada where we replaced the gear.

The second time, the quadrant 'jumped' off the post. I had to align the wheel precisely up on deck so that Alex could refit it below. Naturally, I was at the helm both times. :ermm: