Part one, aka pulling all the stuff out.
‘But Matthew’, I hear you cry, ‘didn’t you just spend a ton of time messing around with cables when you were hauled out?’
Nice memory, and yes I did. However, that was just taking the quadrant and cables off so I could drop the rudder. While I was down there I noticed the cable was looking a bit shabby, and since having a cable snap is LITERALLY guaranteed to happen at the worst possible time (docking, undocking, showing off to some cuties) it was one thing that got bumped to the top.
First I had to dismantle the whole pedestal of course
I pulled the cables out pretty easily, it only took 30 mins. Then because I am an idiot a savvy sailor I decided to also pull out the throttle and shifter cable. The throttle cable is actually looking pretty bad, with some rust showing but the shifter looks ok? Again, though I have no idea how old it is so I am going to replace (as again, losing the shifter will happen at a VERY BAD TIME).
Unfastening from the engine was, well not actually that bad and I had no seized bolts, much to my enormous surprise and delight! (it’s been a rough couple of weeks, it doesn’t take much to delight me right now)
Shifter cable
Throttle Cable. Note the crack in the jacket on the left with the rust showing.
And here is the whole mess laid out
Notice that the steering cables have chain crimped on. Somehow.
Basically the hard part will be finding new replacement parts for this that don’t cost a small fortune. Well the ACTUAL hard part will be putting everything back together without it collapsing in a faulty towers-esque shitheap, but finding everything will suck a lot as well.
STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO (eventually)
