On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 16:48:17 -0400, DSK wrote:

Tillers are certainly cheaper, too. And if designed to be unshipped or
pivoted up out of the way, they leave the cockpit much clearer.

Wheels can be very cool, though.

More to break and harder to access on a smaller boat (say, under 30
feet), however, and they take up a lot of room in some cockpits (most
of which are better small, anyway) and they put the helmsman usually
right at the aft end.

Again, not necessarily ideal.

Autopiloting with a tiller can be done with a piece of thick shock
cord/thin line and a "tiller tamer". With a wheel, the solution is
usually electrical and expensive.

Lastly, with a tiller extension, I can shift my weight to high side
and see around the boat while I continue to steer. I can also steer
with my legs...ok, with my backside...as I handle the cabintop
mainsheet. I can even grind a winch with a foot pinning the extension.

So I like tillers for feel, convenience, simplicity, the saved space
when at dock, cost and flexibility to move practically onto the
toerail on a 33 footer and still steer using a little stick screwed
into the bigger stick.

But after 35 feet or so, things can get heavy, particularly in ocean
sailing. And some people feel more confident behind a wheel. And if
you like gadgets, it's easier in some ways to adapt wheel steering to
autohelming than a tiller, although it's pretty simple to adapt a
tiller to a windvane, and all the parts stay visible.

After 25 years of wheel-mania, however, things may be changing, just a
bit. I saw that a brand new Jenneau SO 32
http://www.cruisingworld.com/article...=395&catID=565

with a lovely heavily varnished tiller! I asked the owner about it,
and he said pretty well what I did, but with the added point that with
a "sugar scoop" stern, a wheel would ruin one of the more attractive
options of someone who had mastered stern-in docking: the ability to
walk directly into the boat without stepping up or down.

But to each their own. I dislike Hunters, but I thought that Hunter 50
"concept boat" with a tiller was brave and logical, given the light
weight and the (presumed) racer-cruiser aspect.

R.