Ariel #24

[Tim Mertinooke]

Post 157 explains it in greater detail, but in a nutshell I sailed her hard in 15-20 knot winds for two hours and I noticed a greater amount of play in the tiller the closer we got to our destination. When we went around the corner into Essex Bay to anchor the tide and wind were opposing each other but not in a consistent manner making it challenging to achor. We anchored and I set the tiller so that the boat would ride on the anchor without wrapping which is a common occurance where we were. The yacht club I am member of calls it the "Essex Wrap". With a lengthened wind gust we wrapped around our anchor rode which put an enormous amount of strain on the rudder and that's when we heard it crack. The tiller wne tloose and I immediately knew what had happened although I didn't know to what extent the damage was until later that day when we were back at our mooring. I was relieved to see that the top part of the rudder broke and that it appeared to be about 75% there which will give me a nice place to fabricate a repair from. I didn't dive down to get a better look I was just pearing down from the tender with a mask.

As far as the repair goes, I am trying to make a cheap adequite repair that will get me through the next two months of fair-weather sailing. Our cruising plans are to stay close to home and maybe do a couple 3-5 hour jaunts down or up the coast, but not venture too far from home and to certainly not push the boat as I have no real specs to go by for the integrity of this repair. On paper it looks Macgyverish enough to work, but for how long?

I will post lots of pictures for everyone to see. Close-ups of the damage, repair, etc. so that we have on this site an archived detail of a rudder failure. The repair will consist of a galvenized steel water pipe with a threaded elbow at the end on which another short piece of galvenized water pipe will be will be threaded into place. That short piece will act as the lateral piece that transfers the movement of the shaft (new vertical pipe) to movement of the blade. The threads will be glued together with epoxy and I might put a small amount of cloth around the elbow because I'm not sure how much strength this will actually have because this fitting was not designed for such an application. I also do not want the fitting to become unthreaded by the twisting motion of the tiller and resistance on the blade. The remaining piece of origianal rudder that is still there will be cut so that the lateral pipe rests on it evenly. I have copper strapping that I will then put over the top of the pipe and will screw it down to the original piece still there. This will hold it in place and provide some strength which will be needed to be able to move the rudder. I will then take two thin pieces of plywood that I cut out to match the original piece that is now missing and sandwhich over the lateral pipe being sure to leave a healthy lip over the remaing original rudder. I have four stainless bolts with large fender washers that are going to clamp this together. I am also going to screw in a bunch of galvenized screws into the two pieces of plywood from both sides because the resin holding the plywood together will surely be inadequite and the wood is going to want to seperate in a short while. The screws will mechanically hold the ply pieces together even if the resin dissolves. This should create a reapir that will be adequite to do some light sailing. I spent $38 at home depot the other night and I think I have everything I need to perform the repair. If it does work I saved my sailing season for less than 40 bucks. If it doesn't work, oh well, at least I had a cool problem to wrap my brain around and someone will know what not to do if this happens to them.

Feel free to light this idea on fire or blow it out of the water as I plan to do the repair Tuesday and have time to change course. This winter when I fabricate a new rudder from scratch it will be very strong and well made.