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.

On a number of occasions the easiest solution was to do without certain non-essential items, such as a diesel genset or freezer. The former was the easiest decision because we simply couldn’t afford one. Auxiliary diesel generators for cruising boats were still a novelty in those days and only the largest boats in my survey conducted in the South Pacific had one on board. As our electrical consumption was very modest, and we often used paraffin lamps, we managed to charge our one and only battery by the main engine.