Henry moored near Bridge 67

Henry moored near Bridge 67, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

To my immense relief, I may have solved, at least partially, the mystery of Henry's wayward steering.
Conventional 'Norman' wisdom (sic) has it that the 23 hull needs extra weight at the front to make it steer in a straight line. I have tried any amount of extra weight under the forward bunks, in addition to the stack of concrete blocks that were already installed there by a previous owner, with little, if any, improvement. I have made guests sit under the foredeck on swelteringly hot days while I drive up and down the canal and I have measured the freeboard of every other Norman 23 in the marina, and matched mine to those whose owners appear to have cured their boat's wandering. To the millimetre. Really.
Even after all this Henry still swayed down the canal as if she was looking for the kebab van in Basildon High Street after an all night hen party. She would track nice and straight for a few seconds, then start a gentle swing to one side or the other, which quickly became a more pronounced veer despite my timely correction, until I finally had so much opposite lock on that she had no option but to swing suddenly back the other way, which again needed far more correction than was reasonable...etc. Oncoming boaters would either smile indulgently at me as if I was driving an Austin 7, or avoid eye contact, presumably in case I started asking them daft questions like "Please Mister, can you teach me to drive a boat?"
But all that is just a distant memory now. While looking at the boat from the other side of the marina, I noticed that the outboard shaft was far from vertical. In fact it was tilted in towards the transom by 10 or 15 degrees. The picture above shows this quite clearly, and I am reasonably embarrassed that I have never noticed it before.
I may be fairly numb in many ways, but even I know that it should be as near vertical as possible so that the prop is at the right angle and the cavitation plate is flat.
A quick adjustment of the thrust pin (two stops out) and a trial run told me that I had hit the nail on the head at long last.
Henry's steering is possibly still not quite perfect, but, in fairness, I have OCD'd so much about this issue that I now can't tell if it's me or the boat at fault.
Still, at least I won't be getting the vintage car driver's pity smile any more. And that is definitely something to be grateful for.