What’s inside your binnacle?

Because the idea of losing steering in a pass in a remote atoll gives me the heebie jeebies, we like to give our steering mechanisms regular love.

We have a steering quadrant and it is relatively easy to keep an eye on those cables. It is a little more difficult, but not too painful, to give the chain from the quadrant to the wheel a visual check and some grease.

First we took off the compass, then a cover plate, and voila this is what our massive chain looks like – like a big bike chain. You can also see the levers for our gear shifter and our throttle.

We cleaned things up and regreased and put things back together – peace of mind (for a while) again. Another tick on the ever present to do list.