Mates: This is for older catalina owners (early to mid 80's). It might apply to Catalina's in the 90's also but I'm not sure. A C30 friend of mine, who is monitoring this Forum, called me this morning to relate a situation that happened to him last week end coming back from Catalina Island. His steering broke about 10 miles off shore. A while back I had told him that it would be a good idea for him to try his emergancy tiller at the dock. I also told him that the nut holding the steering wheel can be a bear to get off. Why this is important is that you can't use the emergency tiller with the steering wheel in place. Do you think he took my advise!?! Read on to find out. When the steering let go, the first problem he had was finding the emergency tiller in the first place. The nut on the steering wheel proved to be impossable to get off and he did not have a wrench big enough anyway. He had to install the emergency tiller because the rudder was flopping all over the place but he could only move the tiller so far. The rest of the travel was blocked by the wheel so he ended up making big circles. His call for help was quickly answered by a power boater (god bless them most times - they usually have more tools than a sail boat), who had the wrench for the nut. The power boater had it off in seconds and would not take a dime for his work. He just hopped back on his boat and was off. So the moral of the story is check out the emergency tiller at the dock and break that steering wheel nut loose. Install it just a little past hand tight. That way you will not have any trouble getting it off.
