I'll see what I can do for pics. Buying a house is killing my sailing season. Last night I bought a new dresser from IKEA. It's double-wide, and the most complicated assembly I think I've done from them. As of bedtime last night, only the cabinet is together, I just didn't have enough time to put the drawers together, too. If it's not storming AGAIN tonight, I guess it'll be a lawn work evening. Whenever am I going to be able to visit the boat again? :cry::cry::cry:
Here is a picture of my Tiller Clutch installation:
Note that my control line (purple) is not the same the Tiller Clutch ships with. This is because I have some Dyneema cored line of same diameter, so I used that for less stretch on the control line.
Some notes on a TC install: Instructions say to mount it very close to then end of the tiller. On my smaller boat, I found that sometimes releasing my grip during a tack would inadvertently engage the lever. For the big boat, I moved it back on the tiller a bit more, as seen in the pic.
For control line routing, you need to balance cockpit obstruction with control line slackening. I had a long discussion with the maker of the TC, Pete, and we talked about the diagram in his instructions, where the line goes back to turning blocks on the transom, and then forward to cleats. The same effect could be achieved with cleats at the point of the turning blocks - the diagram just shows a setup to get the line out of the way. My installation with fairlead clam cleats on the top of the transom coaming is about the same effective angle as the diagram. I use clam cleats so I can easily adjust the control line tension. Be aware that ideal mounting point for the ends of the control line are on the side coaming where the hole in the TC would touch the coaming if the tiller were hard over. This cleat position would make a very obtuse angle of the control line, which approximates the arc of travel of the TC hole (as close as a triangle shape will allow.) This is notable because as you move the tiller off of the centerline, slack will develop in the control line system. (Damn you, Pythagoras!) If you make the angle of the control line more acute, you will get greater slack as you move off the centerline. If you make the cleats too close to the centerline, the angle will be too acute and won't have much leverage to hold the tiller at all. My setup is fairly acute. I would like to go with a more obtuse angle so there is less slack.
A guy I know has worked out a way to combat this slack. He has a Precision 165 with aft quarter mooring cleats similar to the ones on my boat. He takes one end of the control line and cleats to the quarter cleat. It runs through the tiller clutch, and then he has attached a stout bungee cord with hook to the other end of the control line. This gets hooked to the other quarter cleat, with the bungee under some tension. Because the bungee is stout, it resists the tiller coming off station when on tack on the same side as bungee, when it is pulling due to weather helm. Because the bungee is stretched a bit, when you take the tiller off centerline, the bungee pulls slack out of the system. I suspect that the bungee will also pull enough consistent tension and friction on the system, that I could trim my sails for neutral helm and hands-free sailing, without engaging the clutch. (I generally only do this while sitting in the cockpit. If I'm going below or forward, I do lock the clutch.) I haven't tried this setup, but I need to.
I will try to get pics of my hank-on jib downhaul line. It's very simple, really. I use a 2" piece of grey PVC electrical conduit, sawed with a slit down the length. I then filed notches in the ends of the slit, to make it easier to force over the forestay (that slit is very tightly compressed once you have sawed it. I was surprised by this.) Then I have drilled 2 in-line holes, about 3/8" in from the ends. I used 3/16" double braid polyester Samson LS Yacht Braid from this site's chandlery, cheapest I could find at the time. I believe the similar from
www.cajunrope.com is currently $0.02/ft less expensive. This goes in one hole, up through the middle of the piece of conduit, and out the other hole, secured with an overhand knot. This "slider" goes between my top and next down hank. Or did I start running it above the top hank? Hmmm, can't remember. I don't have a headboard on the jib, so maybe I did go above the top hank... Some people reeve the line through one or two hanks next to the forestay, to help prevent it flopping around so much, but I found too much binding friction. So I lashed 2 3/4" welded stainless steel rings to the hanks using sailmaker's polyester twine, about 1/3rd and 2/3rds up the luff. The downhaul reeves through these rings, with very minimal friction. On my boat, there is a U bolt through the deck just aft of the stemhead fitting, where the original wire luff furling drum attached. I have a single block shackled to this U bolt. If your boat has 3 holes in the stemhead fitting, you could put forestay into forward most hole, jib tack in middle, and turning block at aft most hole. Or maybe shackle the turning block through the same shackle you use for the jib tack. From the turning block, the outhaul runs down the side deck to a bullseye fairlead already installed where the original furler line ran. You could also attach one or two turning blocks to stanchion bases. From my fairlead, the line runs to a small horn cleat mounted to the side of the house, right at the back corner. When hoisting and dousing the jib, if I stand in the open cabin with hatch cover slid forward, I can reach the jib halyard horn cleat, and the downhaul line. So I usually hoist and douse standing in the cabin, the benefits of a small boat. Usually the jib falls down most of the way on its own, but I've got that downhaul when I need it. With the downhaul pulled all the way down and cleated off, and both jib sheets cleated with the clew close to the centerline, the jib does not blow off, and the head does not try to sail up the forestay in the wind. I coil the excess and loop it like a cow hitch to the lifeline. My biggest problem is that the downhaul compresses all the hanks onto the threaded turnbuckle stud swage, and the hanks twist and bind on this swage in a way that they do not on the wire. I would like to find some kind of collar I can attach to the wire above the swage, so that the hanks do not slide down onto the swage.
Finally, in lieu of leading halyards aft, with turning blocks at mast base, and deck organizers, and cleats or clutches mounted to the house, I have found a simpler solution for small boats. For my spinnaker halyard, I have mounted a swiveling cam cleat to the mast. It is item 11.70 on this page:
http://www.sailcare.com/bb-blocks-516.shtml The line comes down the mast, turns in the sheave, and out through the cam cleat. My halyard is long enough that it reaches from the back of the cabin in the cockpit. I can hoist the chute and cleat off from the cockpit or down in the cabin, launching out of the open hatch, or taking down into the open hatch. (Someday I should build a PVC frame to sit over the hatch, with a fabric "hamper" hanging down. If I raced frequently, I would have done so already.) Anyway, I have considered moving the jib and main halyards to these kinds of cleats, instead of the horn cleats mounted to the sides of the mast. I know of another O'day 192 in my marina who has done this. Personally, I have no problem going to the mast up the starboard side deck to hoist and douse the main. Where I would really like to have this swiveling cleat arrangement is on the jib halyard, because no matter how hard I pull on the jib halyard on a windy day, I seem to get some scalloping in the jib luff after sailing a bit, necessitating me trying to tension the halyard again (which is a PITA with a horn cleat.) A swiveling cam cleat would allow me to just pull harder on the line, and the cams would grip, allowing for very easy tensioning. The biggest drawback to one of these swiveling cam cleats is that you will have nowhere to store the loops of excess line once the sails are hoisted. You can't hang the loops like you can with a horn cleat, and the taut halyard is held off the mast far enough that you cannot stuff the loops under it if that is the way you prefer to trap the excess. (I don't like that method, because the jib sheets get caught up on the loops more than when I hang the coils off the horn cleat.) On the Viadana cleat, there is that large hole through the body underneath the turning sheave, which I suppose you could rig some self-adhering Velcro strips to gather the loops of line. Meh, might be too fiddly...
I hope some of these descriptions help. I will try to get pics, but right now our forecasts are looking crappy with rain until Friday..
