.Last year I bought my first sail boat, a 1984 Cascade 27. I it was moored in Friday Harbor so my first job was to sail it home. More on that in another article. As we prepped the boat the we noticed the tiller was disintegrating. It had rot and was delaminating. We had a little bit of three things, money, time and ingenuity. We were able to patch it together with some epoxy, three hose clamps and some rope. This lasted for about 3 months before the rotten wood just continued to crack and split. I took it off and set it aside.

After sailing the boat for another nine months I decided the tiller could be much shorter. So revisiting the old tiller I decided that if the bad part was cut off the rest could be glued and refinished. After mucking about with it for about an hour I decided that my work wasn’t Gudenuff. But I knew where I could get such skill. I took the tiller over to George who very graciously accepted the assignment.

George went above and beyond the call of duty. He sanded the whole thing down, removed the old varnish while retaining the aged character of the wood. He stained it and cut off the bad parts bevelled the end to fit my rudder post, glued it, varnished it, and even cut my mounting straps to fit the new length and polished them up bright. The final project looks great.

When I came to pick it up he clamped it to a bench clamp and said see if you can break it. I gave it a firm tug and the table wobbled but the tiller was solid. Last week we had it out in the Henderson Inlet Race with some pretty good winds that wanted to round us up. The tiller got quite a work out. I’m happy to say it is standing up to the test well and I expect it will see many years of use.

I was so pleased with the results that when one of my crew suggested I need a certain piece of wood for my stern light. I didn’t even bother trying to mess with it myself. I went straight to George and again he manufactured a fabulous little block to mount the light to my pushpit and route the wires through. It is also finished very nice and is extremely solid work.

And last but not least if you don’t know George donates his talents and tools to Members for free. If your luckyenuph he might even put on an amazing scale train exhibit for you!

Alan Niles, Genesis