home-made tiller clutch

[jdoorly]

My electronic servo activated Raymarine Tiller Pilot has never been able to keep this centerboard boat on course for long. Sometimes I get lucky, but mostly, at the worst possible time, the boat seems to head straight for the closest obstruction. And when you notice she's going off course and you calmly go to detach the pilot from the tiller, IT STICKS! and cannot be removed with foulest of epithets. I became motivated to find the best tiller holder/brake/clutch/lock thingy design and implement it.

I searched the internet and surveyed the various devices available and made mental notes of the features that I might find useful. It should be quick and easy to turn on and off, require only the tiller hand to operate, it should hold the tiller at any angle desired, it should allow the user to overcome the holding action and just grab the tiller and change coarse, it should be as close as possible to free.

Of the dozens of devices I considered I was most impressed with the Tiller Clutch, just a box with a lever sticking out and rope going through, and though I can't see the mechanism inside the box, I can figuer out how I would design that mechanism.

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I use the lever to apply a cam action to a block, and a spring puts constant tension on the block. With the block captured inside and the lever pressing on the block you drill a 7/32 hole (for 3/16" line) through the walls and block. Then reeve the line through, it should run freely. When you release the lever the spring will push the block out of line with the wall holes and grab the control line. The holding power depends on the spring strength. My prototypes where all done in oak and brass, but I expect one day moisture will get past the epoxy and varnish and gum up the innards and I'll re-do in aluminum.

BTW, I was feeling a bit leary of my skinny little 40+ year old tiller so I wrapped spirals of uni-directional carbon fiber tape around the after appendages and another spiral up to half way up the tiller, where I ran out of tape. Now I feel much better! Do you think I should put any epoxy on it?:roll:

[navahoIII]

Wouldn't a "Tiller-Tamer" (Reg. trademark, I think) do the job nicely? I installed one and it holds the tiller where you put it yet allows it to be moved by hand when the tension on the mechanism is not 'locked'.

[GreenLake]

I find all of these devices overkill, and they don't play well with the use of a hiking stick (because you can't engage/disengage them when you are sitting out).

My favorite is the "two bungee solution". One, regular diameter, bungee across the boat. The other, a length of thinner bungee cord, wrapped three times around tiller and first bungee.

The holding power is by friction. How much friction you get is determined by how tight the thin bungee is wrapped. I find that I don't need all that much friction to hold the tiller.

Once assembled, there's no need to engage/disengage. You can simply steer as before. For minor correction, the stretch in the first bungee will let the tiller move. If you apply more force, you overcome the friction and the tiller slides to a new point on the main bungee.

If you let go of the tiller it will be held in place close to where you last had it, sometimes a little "nudge" will be needed to let it slide to the desired point.

I mount the main bungee about a foot aft of the tip of the tiller. That's well forward of the stern cleats.

[jdoorly]

NavahoIII, the Tiller Tamer has only 1 of the 5 requirements I listed, that of 'holding the tiller at any angle desired'. There is however, 1 feature of the Tiller Tamer that I did not require; since you need to twist the control to engage it I assume that you can optionally twist it hard or soft to give you different 'grab torques' to hold the line. I experimented with different cam shapes and flats to accomplish this but in the end found 'on' and 'off' the most reliable. I didn't give the 'Tamer' credit for an 'override' feature because this is all conjecture on my part.

GL, I've got about 20 hours on this device and it works within all the requirements I listed and I'm very happy with it. When I'm using the tiller extension I'm also sitting up on the rail trying to hold the boat flat, if I were to set a tiller brake and go do something the boat would likely capsize. I don't think I understand that as a requirement? However, one could reduce the strength of the spring, or make a third 'mid' position for the lever that would hold the tiller in most situations but also allow steering with the brake partially on.

I Understand your bungee system and I think it's clever, but for me it would not have been free as I lack 7 contiguous feet of bungee, and I like having a zero friction mode available. Little scraps of oak I have in abundance

[GreenLake]

jdoorly, I sometimes (often?) use the extension simply to sit forward. I still like the fact that I can let go of the tiller to attend to any "emergency", real or imagined, without the boat getting too far off course.

I equally like literally not being "locked in". Forgetting I have a tiller clutch locked would be just the thing to happen to me, usually when I'm ready for that last-minute tack.

Actually, what really happened was that I set out by myself one day without such a device (as I had done many times before). I just ended up that day with more "close calls" than I felt I could tolerate, so I rigged something on the spot.

Spare bungees is what I had, and I've been so happy with this that I made it a formal part of my equipment - by installing attachment points on either side of the cockpit.

I've never seen any other tiller steadying device in action or been on any other boat with one, so I can't really compare. Might be that 5 minutes with some other device makes me see real shortcomings of my setup. Who knows?

[ChrisB]

navahoIII,

I also use a tiller tamer. I have a bowline on one end of the line and a tautline hitch at the other end so I can add slack in the line when I don't want the drag of the tiller tamer. The loops drop over the stern cleats to deploy the tamer.

[TIM WEBB]

+1 on the tiller tamer.

The Red Witch has SS U-bolts on the transom (stock? Dunno) through-bolted, just below the top edge of the transom, at the very outside near the gunwales, pointing forward (inboard). I have a snap shackle on one end of the tamer line that I clip to one U-bolt. On the other side I have a fairlead clam cleat. I find that with the tiller amidships, if I tighten the line in the cleat, I get enough tension to keep the tiller centered, without tightening the knob, but can still move it easily. As you move the tiller away from center, the line goes slack. So, the only time I really use the tension knob is when the tiller is hard over for heaving-to ...