The bearing seemed to have collapsed making the steering wheel very loose. To get us back to Brisbane I cut up a nylon chopping board to make a couple of bushes which seemed to hold the steering in place better.
When we got back to Brisbane I started disassembling the helm. With several calls to a friend in Sydney (thanks Gordon) I discovered the only way to fix the problem was to remove the entire helm. With Ben and Greg’s help we disassembled and replaced the bearings.
I remounted the helm on the boat, connected the rudder up and it seems to work.
In removing the helm, had to cut out all of the fibreglass housing which meant now I had to build a new helm station. Instead of using fibreglass I built this one out of timber so the back could be removed if anything ever needed repairing again. All this has taken approx 3 weeks to do.
Everything on the boat takes longer to do in this heat and humidity – a trip to the hardware store for bolts takes all day. This week we hope to take it for a test sail.
