Ariel #24

[Tim Mertinooke]

Kurt thanks! After a little more research about laminating the rudder I decided to leave well enough alone at least for this coming season. I'm going to leave it as is for now and put it back on once I finish attaching the rudder shoe, strap, etc. My season will be realtively short this year in the water. We are putting the boat in toward the middle of June and will take her out in the beginning of September. My wife, son, and I will have two months every summer to really use her and this summer being our first with the boat will be a series of shakedown cruises aimed at seeing what we want onboard, what needs to be fixed, replaced, etc. I'm going to pull her out in September so that I have a couple months of epoxy weather to do more projects. We live about two hours from where we will keep the boat during the summer and having her on a trailer allows me to bring her home for just a tank of gas. It has been priceless to have her in the yard in terms of getting work done. The following summer after sprucing her up and working through some more projects this fall she'll go in in May and come out the middle of October. We plan on doing a nice extended Maine cruise that summer with the time we have off. Anyway, I'll check the condition of the rudder after my "short" season this year and gauge what to do next. If it's in great shape I'll leave it alone, if not I may just use your idea it sounds pretty bulletproof.