sheet to tiller 'self steering'

[Scott Galloway]

After reading the above, I downloaded some inspirational pages from the web, thanks to you guys, and then purchased a used copy of John Letcher’s book “Self Steering for Sailing Craft from Amazon.com for about $12.50 plus shipping.

In the attached photo is my first attempt at a sheet to tiller rig for close-hauled sailing. I have not yet cut any lines or surgical tubing, so I had to tie a few temporary knots and make some adjustments as I went. (Ever tie a bowline or a half hitch in surgical tubing?). Nonetheless this crude system worked great while beating in variable wind and swell in the ocean today with working jib and full main.

I am most interested if anyone else out there has experimented successfully with sheet to tiller arrangements and I am especially interested in photos and specs for sheet to tiller self-steering rigs for all points of sail on an Ariel.

[Scott Galloway]

I am still messing around with sheet-to-tiller steering for my Ariel. I am having considerable sucess (as in sailing close hauled for miles in modest open ocean swell with winds to twenty plus mph)

The photo below is my mainsheet tension-driven gear, which is proving very effective for close-hauled sailing to almost a beam reach. That system has moved from prototype to fully functionally system in final form with its teak tiller-mounted steering control box. This box is also used with the jib sheet-to-tiller gear. The system also features a weather-side vang, and lee side (one, two, or three strand) surgical tubing elastic. Don't use bungee. Use surgical tubing. This tubing is 3/8 inch OD (outside diameter). Note: Medical supply folks sell their surgical tubing by inside diameter, but sailors describe it by outside diameter.

The gear box is sweet...at least until one of those hand-made teak cleats of mine jabs you someplace tender. The cleats like to chew on the inside of thighs. Actually all you need to a pair of cam cleats mounted on the sides of your tiller, but one of my design criteria was not to drill any more holes in my tiller. I used two existing vertical holes that were drilled by a previous owner.

The box quickly attaches with two wing nuts. My reasoning for the design that I used was that one uses these devices because one wants to let the boat steer itself for hours and hours and hours...or at least for quite a while, and during that quite-a-while, one is not in the aft part of the cockpit. And so, although my design is space-intensive when in use, it can be put away below and does not crowd the cockpit or interfere with other functions when not in use. The problem with the cleats on the steering box is that when one is tacking, one has to slide in behind the box and those cleats are more than little intimidating, (I have bruises on my legs to prove it) even if they are useful for coiling control line ends.

[Scott Galloway]

What is somewhat different about my system as it has developed thus far is the detachable tiller-mounted steering control box and the use of the small vang that connects the mainsheet to the turning block that feed the tiller. With this vang, I can sit behind at the weather forward side of the cockpit behind the trunk cabin or in the companionway hatch and fine tune the rig if need be. Actually, if I reverse the vang, I could run the fine-tuning control line from the vang to a cleat at aft end of the trunk cabin or even down into the cabin to a cleat.

Other systems that I have reviewed have used cam cleats on the tiller, but making fine adjustments in heavy wind is rough with just those cleats. The lines that run through them can be under considerable pressure. I have bruises from those teak cleats to prove it. The vang make this system purr. John Lecher's use of blocks, as Ii understand his book, was primarily to tame jib sheet pressure for his jib sheet-to-tiller gear. In my adaptation of his design (and those of others), I use the vang not to reduce the line pressure on the tiller, but instead to allow me to make fine adjustments to the system with "fingertip control."

[Scott Galloway]

The next photo is my prototype jib sheet cam lever designed to transfer a partial load from the jib sheet onto a line run through three blocks to the tiller. It is hard to tell what is going on in this photo because with this prototype the cam lever, when engaged, is too close to horizontal to make the mechanics of the design evident, but the cam lever does seem to work at least to some degree. This is an intentional, if poorly executed, rip-off of the cam lever design on the wonderful sheet-to-tiller steering page:

http://www.jsward.com/steering/index.shtml

The above page is worth reading and following. It provides detailed directions for designing a sheet-to-tiller system system and an innovative approach to using surgical tubing in self sterign systems. I relied on the page heavily. There are a number of other self steering pages on-line, and they all owe a debt of gratitude to John Letcher's book referenced in other posts above. I bought my copy of Letcher's "Self Steering for Sailing Craft" through Amazon.com for $12.50 plus shipping.

What I can't do is relax the jib sheet without the full load of the jib being transferred through the cam to the tiller. The red line in the photo is the tiller steering control line. The line to which the clip is attached is the jib sheet.

The chief issue is that is you don't want to let out the jib before you disengage the cam cleat on the side of the tiller steering control box. So you need to release the steering control line first, or perhaps disengage it completely at the tiller mounted steering control box until the jib has been reset, and then re-engage it afterwards. This jib sheet cam lever should work for broad reaching or a beam reach.

I need to make refinements here. I would prefer a horizontal cam lever on the lee side of the cockpit that would be accessible from the cockpit. On a day like yesterday, (20+ mph winds and lumpy) going forward on the lee side while alone to engage this cam thing is a real hassle. I did not even try to engage the cam lever until an east wind picked up close to shore, banishign the prevaling westerlyt, and then (as shown in the photo) I was able to play with the cam lever in that five knot easterly. Santa Cruz Point is in the background of the photo.

The cam lever is a prototype made of scrap redwood that I had in my shop. If it works, I intend to remanufacture the cam lever in teak.

[commanderpete]

Thanks Scott

Are ther pros & cons to self-steering by mainsheet vs. jibsheet?

Do you need a set up for both?

[CapnK]

Lechters book is a great resource, and it looks like Scott is having some good ideas! Thx for posting the photos, and keep up the good work!

C'petey - My reading of Lechter (and subsequent experience trying his techniques) is that the jibsheet works better, because that sail and it's sheets are a bit more sensitive to wind angle changes than the main is.

Per Lechter, I have a 4-loop latex bungie thing and another light-line block setup that I have used on both main and jibsheet self-steering setups. To get it working passably, it just takes some experimenting and an understanding of how the sheets are affected when the wind veers (which is easy enough to understand if you've sailed enough, as I think everyone here has).

However, it appears that Scott has moved beyond "passable", and is entering the realm of "Well, I set it two days ago, and there's my intended landfall dead ahead...".

[Scott Galloway]

The wisdom in John Letcher's book and on the above referenced websites on this topic supports using mainsheet tension for a mainsheet-to-tiller steering gear for sailing from close to the wind to a little less than a beam reach. Surgical tubing arrangements like those pictured below are used from the lee rail to tiller to balance the pull of the main. Incidentally, the photo credit for the photo below and the credit for the surgical tubing design goes to the author of http://www.jsward.com/steering/index.shtml

I used that web author's exact measurements and specifications to make up my surgical tubing elastic. My nearly identical surgical tubing device is seen in action in one of the posts above.

The jib-to-tiller arrangement, using jib sheet tension is reportedly best for beam reaching to off wind (broad reach) sailing. My prototype thus far indicates that this will work, but also that this is more a more temperamental system than the main-to-tiller arrangement. It is reportedly best left to longer tacks. John Letcher also provides schematics for using the cam lever and/or a "fools purchase block" arrangement to lighten the load of a direct jib sheet to tiller gear. I have chosen the cam lever approach, which leaves the jib sheet on the winch where I like it, but I will probably recycle my mainsheet-to-tiller vang for double use with the jib sheet-to-tiller gear. The vang just makes minor adjustments easy and facilitates remote operation. Again, this jib sheet-to-tiller gear uses the exact same surgical tubing on the lee side.

So, once you have made up your surgical tubing piece and purchased your blocks, you can use them all on both the main-to-tiller and jib-to-tiller gears. You need surgical tubing, Dacron line, some blocs, some snaps, and two cam cleats or another ay of attaching lines to your tiller. You also need some mechanism (cam lever or vang system) for transferring part of the jib sheet pressure to your tiller for the jib-to-tiller gear. The cam lever can be built of wood and fasteners like my prototype, or of wood, two sheaves and half a cam cleat as John Letcher recommends.

All authors seem to recommend surgical tubing becasue of the linear stretch curve of that tubing over the parabolic stretch curve of bungee cord. However surgical tubing is easily damaged by UV light. Some authors recommend colored surgical tubing as more light resistant

On my system I added a removable steering control box on the tiller and a vang.

I have three (and spare fourth) Garhauer Series 25 ball bearing stainless steel blocks in my set-up and I am using 3/16 and 1/4 inch Dacron line. Low friction blocks are very important. The steering gear box takes two cam cleats, but again, these cam cleats could be directly attached to the tiller. You can also just tie your lines around the tiller. I did that for a while and it works, but that makes adjustment difficult.

My steering box design is flawed at present because of the angle of the approach into those cam cleats on that steering box (over the tiller and straight down). Too much tension on the lines, and you have to work too hard to free the lines. That is one reason that I like my vang set up. I plan to try that also between the cam lever on the jib sheet and the first leeward turning block for the jib sheet to tiller gear. I have a lot of refinements to make yet. I am not ready to go below for a snooze...especially not in coastal waters. I like to keep a look-out. These systems won’t steer around other boats, and they hold a course not by compass, but by the wind.

But while close hauled, I can go forward for hours when sailing if I want to do so, or go below or go below to concentrate on navigation issues, make lunch, etc. Best of all, I can sit someplace dry (or less wet anyway) while Augustine sails herself. My role as Skipper then is not wrestling with the tiller, but tending the sails or the self-steering vang from time to time, and focusing on keeping watch, navigation, and course planning. I hope to achieve that level of control also on beam and broad reaches with some refinements.

A couple of words of caution:

1. Without a tiller in your hand, you tend to look around and not necessarily at the approaching swells. I was thrown across the cockpit by swell that broke against the weather side of the hull, while I was focusing on something else with it was gusting above 20 mph with three foot swells. That wouldn’t have happened if I had been at the tiller. Your automatic helmsman won’t shout warnings to the crew.

2. More so than ever, wear a very short harness. My harness has a three and six foot tether. If you fall overboard the boat will probably never round up. You may be trying to climb back on while beating at theoretical hull speed. Also a lifejacket and a waterproof VHF and/or PLB in your pocket are both good ideas while sailing alone

3. Your system can’t sense other boats, buoys or hazards to navigation. When the wind direction changes so will your heading.

4. Be careful about overloading the points (cleats) where you attach your self-steering blocks by transferring excessive tension from your jib sheet to your steering lines. All you have to do is slack off the jib sheet without first releasing your jib sheet-to-tiller control line to do that.