Hey there, folks! Lenny Rudow here for BoatUS Magazine. Now, you may be looking at the screen
right now going, wait a minute. Why doesn't this boat have a steering wheel? Because
this is a tiller steer rig. Now tiller steers seem a little odd to a lot of people, mostly
because everyone's just accustomed to steering vehicles with wheels. But it actually has a lot
of advantages. Chief among them a much faster response to input from the captain at the helm.
Now this boat is my crabbing skiff. Yeah I'm ready to scoop up some crabs! Now I could have
easily put in a console and a wheel here, but that would have been a mistake because the boat
would have become much less maneuverable. Plus tiller steers tend to be a lot less expensive.
You eliminate all those cables and controls. You don't need all that stuff. On top of all that,
eliminating all that stuff opens up a ton of room in the boat. But running a tiller steer
boat does take some getting used to. Let's look at a few of the finer points. First things first,
you'll need to locate the engine cut-off switch, or ECOS. Now on most tiller steers
that's located up near the engine somewhere. On this boat, it's right here. Shifting into
to and out of reverse is naturally a little different. Most motors will have some sort
of lever or arm. On this motor, it's right here. You just push it forward to go into forward gear,
back to neutral, and backwards to go into reverse gear. This is the one thing that
confuses most folks about a tiller steer. We're going to go into forward here. Steering can be
a little bit confusing because you actually want to push the tiller arm in the opposite direction
you want the boat to go . So if I want the boat to turn to starboard, I'll shove the tiller arm
to port. If I want the boat to go to port, I'll shove the tiller arm back to starboard.
Hopefully, people, you could see exactly what I was talking about right there in
that little demo. The response you get when steering with a tiller is instantaneous. If
this boat had a steering wheel, I couldn't move it around like this. And this is at idle speed!
You also do have to be careful about how you shove that tiller arm on some
boats because the response is instantaneous. It's easy to oversteer. The throttle can be a
little different on different tiller steers, but most of them you just rotate the tiller itself
to open up the throttle, and rotate in the opposite direction
to go back to idle. This little lever down here is important to know about. It's a tensioner.
Some people call it the copilot, and you slide it back and forth to increase or reduce the amount of
tension it takes to swing the tiller arm. You can set it wherever you're comfortable with,
but it's usually good to have at least a little bit of friction in there to prevent oversteering.
I do want to mention, folks, that this rig actually has a tiller extension handle on
it. Right out of the factory, this motor the tiller handle would end right here. I put this
on because I use this boat for crabbing and often I need to turn this way and steer like this, so I
really needed that extra bit of reach. In most cases you won't need one. It really depends on
how the boat's organized and where the seats are, but just so you know, this is an extended tiller
handle that you're seeing here. Tiller steers are great for tenders, dinghies -- lots of small
boats. Not only do they work well and make that handling excellent, they're just downright fun!
Yes, it's true, running a tiller steer boat will take a little bit of getting
used to if you've always used a steering wheel, but there are a lot of advantages
to it. We hope this video has helped to make that clear, and don't forget leave
your comments below and click on the button to subscribe to the BoatUS YouTube channel.