When we set sail from the BVIs to Florida we left with a degree of excitement and nervousness. About 40 nautical miles into journey the auto-pilot failed and we diverted to San Juan, Puerto Rico to order a new transducer sensor for the auto-pilot.

Skip ahead to us travelling down the Intercoastal Waterway and steering is very strange. I would have turn the wheel significantly one way or the other to get any response from the boat. Not having a whole lot of experience I just thought steering a boat is difficult and I adjusted to the lag of response. When Diane took over the helm, with in minutes she bold stated there is something very wrong with the steering.

So we looked behind the helm in the saloon, and we could see the chains and steele cables going to the rudder where not flowing and it would take considerable wheel action to get them to operate at all. At this point we decided we were still witnessing systems but not the root cause. We decide futher exploration was need so we found a convenient marina in the area and where ready to attack the problem.

It turns out there are two sheaves/pullys at the back of the boat aft of the helm on on top of the other under the deck. They can only be accessed from the Starboard Lazerette. Their purpose is to take the steele cables from the helm and redirect them to the rudders. So here where we found the problem. When looked to inspect the sheaves we could only see a pile of metal shavings. When we cleared away the pile the problem was quite obvious. One of the Aluminum sheaves had seized and the steele cable had sawed right through it. Steele beat aluminum everytime.

Once we new what the problem was, Diane was able to talk directly to the owner of the manufacture and we were able to order two new sheaves and we were able to do the installation ourselves.

I have to laugh that I thought the delay was something I had to adjust or compensate for. The steering is so respinsive now.