Steering with the motor and motor mounting

Rye Gewalt (ryeg@vais.net)
Thu, 15 Jul 1999 21:44:49 -0400


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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Hi Bruce.

I have a 19 and a long shaft motor on the "standard WWP" adjustable
mount. Even with the long shaft motor it is awkward at best to steer
with the motor. I almost always use the rudder and just keep the motor
pointed forward. Sometimes when docking or other difficult or tight
activities I will twist the motor to one side or the other, but
generally find the rudder to be quite adequate. Of course I never
really thought of using the motor to steer.

Incidentally, when I got my boat the wooden block on which the motor
mounts was severely weathered -- to a point of being almost spongy.
Rather than make a new one, I dried it out good and applied warm epoxy
to the warm block. Epoxy gets almost water like when warm and it
penetrated the block very well. The I applied varnish over the epoxy to
protect it from the UV (epoxy doesn't like sunshine). It looks really
nice. Of course when you warm up epoxy to make it thin you have to use
slow hardener otherwise the stuff sets up in about three seconds.

Regards
Rye