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

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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

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Throttle Cable. Note the crack in the jacket on the left with the rust showing.

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And here is the whole mess laid out

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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)

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