"Tiller Towards Trouble"

On the TI the tiller works opposite to what am used to. After 50 years of sailing with conventional rudder controlling the tiller has become an automatic reaction and my spinal cord refuses to relearn.
Does anyone know if it is possible to swap the tiller lines so "hard-a-starboard" means a turn to port?

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Bo Karlberg
Taby
Sweden
Sail Tandem Island No P1787 in the Stockholm Archipelago (some 40,000 islands and rocks)

You should be able to switch the lines inside the back hatch from the rudder to the back rudder control. Just remember to tell any other TI owner you might let use your boat!

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Hobie Island Sailing since 2006

I find the steering normal when I sit in the seat normal. Sometimes I sit sideways in the drive well with my feet on the starboard aka and steer with my right hand, I all of a sudden start steering the wrong way.

I had the same trouble when I sailed a boat with wheel steering from beside the wheel.

If you think of the handle as the top spoke of a wheel it is normal. If you think of it as a tiller it is reversed.

If you swap them remember there is an o-ring on the lines to keep water from coming in.

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Yellow TI

The lines that come through the tubes from the rudder are tied just forward of the rear hatch to the lines that continue on to the rudder handle and the up/down pulls, so that's the easiest place to change them. No problems then with the tubes or o-rings.

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Hobie Island Sailing since 2006

Bo,
Other experienced sailors have had similar difficulty adjusting to the reverse tiller.
Some other solutions here:
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=13113&p=73644

Bo,

My wife and I struggled with the same problem when we bought a pair of AI's.

Our solution was to just sail more and become accustomed to it. Just imagine you're sailing a boat with a wheel instead of a tiller.

When I got my TI a few months ago I didn't even notice that it was backwards.

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Jerry D.
St. Johns, Florida
2010 TI
2008 AI

Thanks everyone for the positive response and the many good ideas. Conversion may take place sometime in the winter as we have a fairly short season here in Sweden and I prefer sailing to fiddling with the boat. For the time being I will pretend that the tiller is a wheel as Jerry D suggested.

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Bo Karlberg
Taby
Sweden
Sail Tandem Island No P1787 in the Stockholm Archipelago (some 40,000 islands and rocks)