About Us Page 3

How I got married to the Aries vane gear...continued

After 8 months I had the first batch ready. Nick came over and saw the gears, all lined up. He went straight to a gear and I still can see how his fingers played around, he knew his gears and where to look. I was nearly knocked over by his comment: "No good, Peter". Oh dear I thought.

Well I had made everything a too tight fit. Everything had to be loose not to pack up by the salt at sea and dust in harbours. So at it again and after another week they finally passed the test, fifteen brand new Aries vane gears were born and many more to come.

I must confess that my suggestions to alterations, improvements was limited to oiling the lines

Peter Matthiesen

around the blocks, having a cover for the gear when not in use etc. Never had any part proven too weak or by other means wanted changing, even the steering lines where still the same on my old gear. But Nick had some improvements in mind. We agreed that everything should be changed into metric measures. All screws, bolts, shafts etc. And he suggested some bushes here and there to prevent corrosion, making it easier to take the gear apart after many years at sea. These were alterations he had had in mind for years but was not able to implement because of the spare part problem.

Also his daughter, Ms. Helen Franklin, has a business selling spare parts for the 8000 gears he had made over the years. Changing everything into metric would mean that my parts did not fit "his" gears, which again meant that Helens business was protected.


		Nick went sailing, his gears are still living on and will be for many years to come. I hope that I can help many sailors to be as well prepared for the oceans as I were that faithful summer of 1988 when it all began ... - Peter Matthiesen

Copyright 2008 Taylorsoft All rights reserved