During August I notice that Serina’s tiller was delaminating again. The cracks appeared very fine – less than 0.5mm – but I didn’t like the look of them, so I arranged to visit Simon Beaven again to investigate.

When sailing, it seemed that the cracks opened up more – as the tiller was put hard over in each direction. I thought that the fixing bolt was pulling the laminates apart.

You may just be able to see the crack – it’s the thin black horizontal line on the top right of the tiller in this image.

When we removed the tiller, this is what we found.

Almost the only laminates not opening up were those holding the bolt in place, but there was still plenty that needed to be fixed.

Simon has glued Serina’s tiller during each of the last two winters, but it had split again.

We suspect the oily teak of the laminates is preventing the epoxy that Simon has used from penetrating the wood and forming an effective join. So something new was required.

We agreed that it was time to try screwing as well as gluing. These are the results:

And once back in place:

Looking great and ready for the rest of the 2018 season! Let’s see how the screws help the situation.