Steering Pedestal Upgrades - Yacht Specialties

Hi All,

We bought a CS-36 earlier this season and it has a cockpit mounted main sheet traveler right in front of the pedestal. I did not want to switch to mid boom sheeting and therefore could not install an offset pedestal guard with Navpod's for the instruments. After giving this quite a bit of thought I came up with a method that works. I removed the pedestal guard top plate, bolted it to a piece of Starboard synthetic lumber duplicated the holes and then made myself a new top plate that was wide enough to hold two Navpod's on either side. It works perfectly and gives me a place for my depth, autopilot and GPS right at my finger tips. Making the top plate was very easy but the plastic wood is not very stiff so I supported it with two brackets made from 1 inch stainless steel dodger tubing and dodger parts. I know this topic comes up from time to time so here are some photos for ideas.

Before:


After:


Support Brackets:


Side View:

Looks great, what a good idea.

I was on this boat last night and Maine Sail really did a great job on this. He should have been and engineer. Definately an upgrade for the off season.

Looks great.

One question I have is how did you get the top plate off the pedestal guard? I had my pedestal re-powder coated a few years ago. Neither I or the shop could figure out how to get this off. The two were solidly corroded together and the top plate was not going to slide off the tubes. Shop ended up having to mask the entire stainless guard.

With some patience & force...

Basically A hammer, wood block & some lubricant. I basically banged it down the pedestal guard then I polished the legs of the guard and it looked brand new. the top plate is reusable once it is sanded and re-painted...