Onboard problem solving

Cruising doyen Jimmy Cornell shares 50 years of lateral thinking from his first hull fit-out to what he stows as gear essentials

- Jimmy Cornell

The challenge of finding solutions to practical problems is something I have enjoyed as far back as I can remember. This was certainly the case when I began fitting out the first Aventura, and as an absolute greenhorn in anything nautical I was forced to come up with answers to complex questions in virtually everything I touched.

As the boat had a centre cockpit and aft cabin, the wheel was too far from the rudderstock so I was advised that the easiest and cheapest solution was to have hydraulic steering. However, that meant that I could not use the self-steering gear whose control lines had to lead to a drum on the wheel or to a tiller.

The solution I came up with was to extend the rudderstock by way of a 2m-long 40mm steel bar to the level of the aft deck and fit a tiller to it. The lines of the Aries gear were easily led to it and thus we could steer both with the wheel and the tiller. Quod erat demonstrandum (QED): ‘Which was to be demonstrated.’

Many of the solutions that followed were rather unorthodox, but they worked and several were repeated on my following boats, such as a day tank for the engine.