Yesterday was race day for my sailing club. Moderate winds running 12-14kts and unusually consistent for our lake. Near the end of the first race I made the turn around the last buoy, hardened up and came close hauled for the run to the finish line as the boat took the wind and heeled up I leaned on my tiller a little to maintain balance and **CRACK**. My fancy laminated wooden tiller split about a third of it's length.
The stick was just barely holding in the rudder bracket.
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We managed to cross the line mostly under control and went into damage control mode. Dropped the head sail and made our field expedient repair.
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Para-cord and zip-ties. And some folks have given me a hard time about all the para-cord and zip-ties I keep on hand.
We managed to finish out the days racing and make a decent showing of it.