When I first went to check the operation of the emergency tiller that came with my pre-owned boat, I was surprised that there was no means to attach it to the rudder post. There was no hole in the post in which to insert the through-bolt. (This probably because the rudder assembly had been replaced in the early 1990's according to a maintanence log that had been left on the boat. Need for an emergency tiller arrangement apparently was missed.) Refer to the pictures. I have modified from the (presumed) original because when I did drill a through-hole in the post, and then attached the tiller through the large hole in the center of the tiller's bracket, I found much too much free play. So I drilled the top hole in the bracket at a size that better matched the diameter of the bolt. This improved the free play. But even at the dock, trying to align the heavy tiller (it's made of 1/8" steel) so as to insert the bolt through the rudder post holes was not easy. I thought maybe attaching the tiller would be much too time consuming in a real emergency on a rocking boat and with the rudder ocsillating. Adding to the challenge is that its not possible to actually see when the the holes line up. To improve, I cut out open-ended channels at the bottom of the tiller's bracket and drilled a second through-hole in the rudder post. The tiller can now be successfully aligned by first dropping the tiller's cut-out channels over the lower bolt. The upper holes in the bracket and the upper holes on the post then line up so the upper bolt can be inserted.
