Rudder Post

AKA "Possibly the nerdiest post I'll ever post". But ever wonder how a rudder mechanism works? They're usually tucked away inside, but on the Pegasus, you can see exactly what's going on (at least at the non-pointy end of the boat), and I thought that was kind of cool. I understand the principal behind how a wheel controls a rudder, but it was fun seeing it in action!

Basically, the rudder post sticks up through the hull of the boat -


and into this big pie-shaped chunk of metal. That's the rudder quadrant.

There's a cable end attached to either end of arc at the front of the the quadrant. The cables wrap around the arc & then each one crosses over to a housing at the side of the boat (you can see the starboard side one here, the other side mirrors that. From there, it runs to where it's attached to the steering device in the wheelhouse. In the case of the Pegasus, it's a sort of a little joystick affair - not quite sure how that works exactly, I'm afraid - but at least this end's pretty straightforward!

Here it is responding very precisely to the captain's hand on the control as she works through final docking manuevers at Pier 40: