Ariel #24

[Tim Mertinooke]

The rudder is repaired and it works.

The repair pictures are on a disk at my house so those will have to wait, but I made up a couple photoshop pics showing the process. Remember that this is a temporary repair to get me through the season and that MacGyverisms are not my norm as I have hopefully proven over the past few months. There is however a certain level of satisfaction and pride involved with making such a repair on the cheap and while it is in the water and on the mooring.

My friend and I dove down and removed the two bronze bolts holding the strap in place. Those came off easy. Prying the strap off of the hull was tougher as I had used 5200 last spring to attach it to the hull. With the right tools and some persuasion we got it off and bent it back enough to lift the rudder out of the shoe. This took us about an hour to complete. Now we had rudder in hand and brought it up on deck where we motored to the dock to do the work.

Here is a photoshop rendition of what the rudder look like when it was removed. The pins coming out of the shaft were broken off and the wood snapped along the grain down to the cutout for the prop aperture.



We decided to make a lateral cut using a pull saw so that the steel pipr could key into the rudder taking advantage of the upper half and lower half that were left once it was sandwiched.


Here is a picture of where we made the cut. BTW-I suck at photoshop when using my laptop which has a touchpad so blur your eyes and imagine a little looking at these photos.



Next, using galvenized 1" steel plumbing pipe we made a shaft attached to a 90 degree elbow off of which was the pipe that keyed into the cutout of the rudder. The two pipes attached to the elbow were set in thickened epoxy and then coated with three layers of cloth running up about 6 inches on each pipe. This was to strngthen the casting of the elbow which was not designed for the forces t was going to undergo and it also sealed the threads and prevents the pipe from unthreading itself out of the elbow when sailing. THis part was pretty straight forward and took about 30 minutes to do and we let it cure for three hours in the hot sun. Once cured, we set the piece into the cutout made earlier in the rudder.




We then sandwhiched the pipe using copper roof flashing on both sides of the lateral pipe followed by 1/4 inch plywood, and on the outside of the ply placed another piece of copper flashing where the lateral pipe is. The flashing was so that the pipe had something solid to push against if the plywood got soft which I'm sure it will as it is regular grade ply (again to make the repair cheap.) I then began screwing galvenized screws into the plywood every couple of inches or so. I put fifty on one side which sandwiched the plywood and flashing to the pipe and what was left of the original rudder. Then I flipped it over and broke off the screw threads that werte sticking through and crewed fifty more going the other way, then flipped it over again and broke the threads of those. At this point it was pretty well sandwiched with no movement of the pipe. We then drilled two 1/4 inch holes just above the copper flashing and two below and used four stainless steel bolts with fender washers and locking nuts to clamp it to the pipe. Then we trimmed the plywood so that it followed the lines of the original rudder and that was it, a new rudder.

It looked something like this once done.

+


Having the rudder completed, we went back out to the mooring and slid it up into the tube and set it in the rudder shoe with no problem. THe strap however was a problem. It was the biggest pain trying to get it back through and have it straight enough to line the holes up so that the bolts fit through. It took use about two hours to do this part believe it or not. I'm trying to work out a strap that might be a little easier to take off and put back on in the water. Maybe enlarging the holes and using washers which would allow for a little more play to get the bolts through would work? Speaking of bolts I am very glad I went that route instead of going with the original peened rods that were there originally. I cannot foresee how one could get the strap off underwater with peened ends. Also, I used carraige bolts to reduce the drag, but in hindsight I think it would have been much easier to have a regular hex head bolt. THat way you don't need to grab it with channel locks if you cannot get it to key in all the way to get it started like we had to do.

Here is the sutset we came back too after motoring around for a while testing it out.




I spent about $60 and it took a whole day to start and finish this repair. So far we have cruised to the Ilses of Shoals for a few days and sailed in 15 knot winds close-hauled with no problems at all. We have logged about 50 NM with the repaired rudder. I don't think I'll push it in high winds, but 15 knots was quite fun and typical for a nice day here and the rudder worked perfect.