Avoiding Disaster at Sea

At the risk of this becoming strictly a boat maintenance blog, this latest episode was meant to be installation of autopilot components below deck. Instead, we uncovered something much more serious in the process. There are a few things you look for while crawling around in the bilges of the boat: bolts, nuts, water, oil, and other evidence of leaks. As it happens, you should also be on the lookout for something else...

Small piles of metal shavings. Metal on metal joints need to be lubricated and aligned properly so that motion is smooth and load is distributed properly. Metal powder like this means one of those needs is not being met. This pulley is a "sheave", and the cable is the boat's steering system. Losing steerage is a sailboat's nightmare scenario, and of course it would fail at the worst possible time in heavy weather when the steering system is pushed to the limit. If you look closely, you'll see the large pin at the center of the sheave is falling out, resulting in all of the force being on the pin itself.

On the other side of the boat, the port side pulley is retained correctly: the pin goes all the way through and engages completely. No metal dust here.

In a panic, I called the manufacturer of this (30+ year old) steering system, who is thankfully still in business and able to ship me some new retention pins. The replacements are stainless steel, but still held in only by cotter pins.

Cotter pins don't seem to be made of very robust metal, whenever I dig into boat projects I seem to find a few broken. Because of this, Shiloh has a new rule every season: "Before the water, check the cotter". Throttle and shift cables, steering cables, and plenty of critical rigging components are all held together by these annoying little bits of metal. We're delayed until the new retention pins arrive, but it's for a good reason. On the list of boat disasters, losing steerage is pretty high up. It'll be a relief to have one less thing to worry about even if it has cost us some time.