There are currently three Romillys (or is it Rommilies?) on the Lymington River: Serina, Baba Lalji and Hebe.

Baba Lalji and Hebe were built in the UK whereas Serina was built in Holland. As you can probably imagine, it’s nice to be able to discuss sailing and maintenance tactics with other Romilly owners from time to time.

This update is about Hebe’s tiller. It snapped at the end of last summer – through the combination of age, damp ingress, not ideal design, and the stresses of Romilly weather-helm.

You can see the effects here:

The tiller snapped – along the grain – through the hole for the bolt that holds the tiller to the rudder.

Notice that the old tiller was made from a single piece of wood, cut to make the sweeping shape of the tiller, but cut across the grain not along it. Notice also the metal plate that has been used to attempt a previous repair.

Fortunately Nigel Sabin lives near-by and offered to make Hebe a new tiller. Nigel is a master carpenter and created a beautiful new, shaped, laminated tiller. The laminates are in Ash, held with Polyurethane glue. The tiller was oiled to provide a satin finish.

Here’s what it looks like alongside its predecessor – with Nigel explaining how it was made:

With a beautiful swan’s head:

And here’s the end result on Hebe: