When I returned from my recent cruise there was a boat in my slip - a
very nice Niagara 35. I helped the marina manager move it to another
location and he explained that it had been purchased by a friend of
another tenant, and it was just staying for a few days.

Then he mentioned that it had one very odd characteristic: the
steering worked in reverse! I said I had never heard of that in a
boat made in the last 50 years, and we agreed that this must have been
the result of some jury rig or half-assed repair. The wheel looked
like the original installation, and I'm sure that Hinterhoeller would
not have taken a short cut even though the rudder post being a foot
aft of the wheel would have made things tight.

Has anyone heard of such a rig? Have there been any production boats
where the steering is reversed? Didn't this fall from favor before WWII?

"Jeff" wrote in message ...
When I returned from my recent cruise there was a boat in my slip - a very
nice Niagara 35. I helped the marina manager move it to another location
and he explained that it had been purchased by a friend of another tenant,
and it was just staying for a few days.

Then he mentioned that it had one very odd characteristic: the steering
worked in reverse! I said I had never heard of that in a boat made in the
last 50 years, and we agreed that this must have been the result of some
jury rig or half-assed repair. The wheel looked like the original
installation, and I'm sure that Hinterhoeller would not have taken a short
cut even though the rudder post being a foot aft of the wheel would have
made things tight.

Has anyone heard of such a rig? Have there been any production boats
where the steering is reversed? Didn't this fall from favor before WWII?


I sailed on a Landfall ( later Vagabond ) 39 by Ron Amy that had that as an
option. It steered normally until you had following seas and then you
flipped a valve and it reversed to hydraulics to the steering servo.

Leanne

"Jeff" wrote
Have there been any production boats where the steering is reversed?

I have to move my tiller opposite to the direction I want the bow to go...

"Ernest Scribbler" wrote in message
. ..
"Jeff" wrote
Have there been any production boats where the steering is reversed?

I have to move my tiller opposite to the direction I want the bow to go...


I can imagine no advantage to a wheel that operates that way. A tiller is
intuitive (to me, anyway); likewise is a wheel. But to turn a wheel in the
opposite direction to the way I want the bow to go...I just can't see it as
anything but trouble.

KLC Lewis wrote:
"Ernest Scribbler" wrote in message
. ..
"Jeff" wrote
Have there been any production boats where the steering is reversed?

I have to move my tiller opposite to the direction I want the bow to
go...


I can imagine no advantage to a wheel that operates that way. A
tiller is intuitive (to me, anyway); likewise is a wheel. But to turn
a wheel in the opposite direction to the way I want the bow to go...I
just can't see it as anything but trouble.

The next time my BMW is in for a servioce, I'll get them to make this
modification, and let you all know the result.

This may well be my last post to this NG, so 'bye to you all!

DP

"KLC Lewis" wrote
I can imagine no advantage to a wheel that operates that way.

It might make some of us less apt, in close quarters, to bang the stern into
the thing we're trying to steer around. Then again, maybe not. What I'm
getting at is that it's more what we're accustomed to than anything
particularly natural or intuitive. I'm not in any way suggesting that
there's anything at all wrong with the way ship's wheels normally work. It's
just that having one that operates the other way would make a certain amount
of sense in consideration of the fact that steering a boat, unlike a car,
generally involves applying forces to the back of the vessel. The front end
doesn't start going the way you want it to go until you get the back end
behind it, if you see what I mean, so operating a reversed wheel from that
perspective shouldn't require any strenuous mental contortions. Picture
yourself at the helm of a pusher tug, behind a long string of barges. Which
way do you, sitting there in the tug's pilothouse, travel to make the bow of
that lead barge turn to port? Which way are you steering to make that
happen? Does that seem intuitive, or do you have to think about it?