Lock Stock and Tiller

Here I am, down for the count, getting my rest and fluids and making no progress on the boat, thanks to these guys:

Strep throat.  First time I remember having it. Oh well.

 Anyway, it has given me some time to ponder on what kind of tiller locking mechanism I will use.  Too early to think about stuff like that?  Well, not really, since everything hinges on everything else and you can make things easier on yourself by thinking ahead, even to the final stages.    

So what kind of mechanism should I use?  The old boat had a rope tiller tamer that I made myself.  It worked really well.  On the new boat it would look something like this:

Rope tiller System

Pros- Fairly easy to make, works OK. 

Cons- Moans and groans and wears the rope out. 

Something else that occurs to me is a wedge system.   First you make a wooden wedge with a finger hole in it like this:

Wedge

Then, you cut a groove in the tiller for the wedge to ride in like this:

You attach a fixed bar just under the tiller so that when you want to lock the tiller, you introduce the wedge into the groove and hammer it in with the palm of your hand, forcing it down against the bar (or up, if you groove the bottom) and jamming it in place. 

Pros- easy to make. would probably work ok.

Cons- you have to keep up with the wedge.

Then there is any number of ways to make the bar moveable so that it pinches the tiller against the wood above it.  Such as:

Cams or wedges that independently lift the ends of the bar.

Very Fiddly.   This would work but I'm not about to try it.

 You could lift the bar from the middle with one stick that you jam in.

This is another type of super-simple lock that would be too fiddly to use, but it occurred to me.  

   Here is another one.  You draw the bar up against the tiller with a cable or rope that runs on two pulleys.  There would be lots of ways to tighten it.

This would have too many parts to break, I think.

All in all, I'm leaning toward just going with the rope again or maybe experimenting with the inset wedge.  

If anyone reading this has any input on this, please leave a comment!