The 9′ long steering tiller fit in to the rudder cassette head to complete this project. There is still cosmetic work to do, but it’s nice to know we could pilot the boat now if all this rain keeps flooding the county.

The tiller makes a full sweeping path across the whole cockpit to get the desired 50 degrees of swing from extreme port to extreme starboard. I think we’ll assume this is comfortable and take it out sailing. But if we find either we want less tiller movement in the cockpit or that the rudder is too limited by the tiller hitting the tower legs, then we will retrofit a linkage system, something like this one on F25c Mojo:

There are two more primary carbon fiber parts to build, the float-hulls chainplates and the 8′ long bowsprit pole. We’ll start on the plates once the shroud end Terminators get here from Colligo. And this box arrived today for the pole – 20′ of 50″ wide carbon uni to be done in a wrapping fashion and add up to the target wall thickness shown in the F39 plans.

We’re pretty excited about that little bit of blue plastic; it’s 10′ of shrink wrap sized to fit over the laminated pole and get heated for a nice even squeeze to hold all that carbon in shape. This $240 shipment, plus a pint or so of epoxy, should yield a pole as good as the +$1k cost pre-built blank tubes. Hopefully this shrink wrap idea works as well as the company’s snazzy how-to website.