H23 Rudder Gudgeons

[Juan Maritime]

I found a replacement rudder assembly for my H23 on CL. After some minor welding to repair worn areas, I had it powder coated and it is now ready to install. I am curious if the two wooden blocks, which appear to be affixed to the transom with 5200, are a factory install or a PO modification. Each gudgeon is held on with two Philips head bolts through these wooden blocks. This seems a bit sketchy to me due to the forces involved. Do these bolts screw into something inside the hull besides fiberglass? I once had to dissect a Catalina 25. The lower gudgeon was screwed into an internal plate encased in fiberglass and completely inaccessible without cutting away essential parts. I am hopeful that is not the case here.
My initial attempt to remove these screws/bolts on the Hunter makes me concerned about stripping the heads. Is it advisable to upgrade to a more substantial gudgeon like a J24? Are the wooden blocks necessary for some spatial reason I do not comprehend? I would feel more confident of the usefulness of these block of wood as backing plates on the inside of the hull. I am also concerned about getting to the interior side of the transom and hope there are suggestions to a better way than installing inspection plates in the cockpit. Thanks

 

[isaksp00]

That is not stock. Mine has no wood spacers on the outside. It also has simple pintles on the stern, not those brackets. You can easily access the inside of the transom by going inside the lazarette. Mine has regular 2 by 4's as backing plates for the pintles and all the other hardware through bolted to be transom. The transom is just fiberglass, about 1/2 in thick or so. You don't need that wood on the outside for any positioning of the rudder, unless maybe those non-stock pintle brackets keep the gudgeons too close without the spacers. My pintles are about an inch and a half from the surface of the transom - I mean the pin itself. You may want to consider replacing yours with stock pintles.

 

[Brian M H23]

My 23 had the same brackets (which are just a beefy but simple pintle) and wood spacers - but the spacers were hardly larger than the bracket. The bottom is accessible, the top, less fun but doable.

 

[Kermit]

I had forgotten what a BAMF rudder assembly the H23 has. No wonder I didn’t enjoy trailering it.

 

[Meriachee]

Interesting storage method for the persuasion tool. That'll leave a mark if tripped over.

 

[Will Gilmore]

It looks sturdy from the outside. I wonder is the PO was having a problem with rudder lift?

- Will (Dragonfly)

 

[isaksp00]

I see that they are just another pintle style now that I looked more closely - I thought the aluminum gudgeons went inside the brackets; it looks like they actually slide from the top like the style on mine. If it were my boat, I'd look inside the transom from in the lazarette (or if you have an inspection port where the gas tank goes, also through it) to see if those are wood screws or bolts attaching the pintles. If they are just screws, I'd be inclined to switch to stainless bolts with some sort of backing plate on the inside. To inspect properly, you may have to climb into the lazarette and more or less lie down with your head toward the stern so you can see the upper pintle. I would suspect you may not need the wood spacers, but unless they are in bad shape, may not hurt to leave them and avoid some work. The rub strip on the hull to deck joint on yours may protrude more than mine, and to get full rudder swing it is possible you need those spacers. Your top pintle seems higher than what I recall on mine (the pintles may be further apart from each other), and it may be that to get the gudgeon over the top of that pin it has to be pushed out away from the rub strip by the spacers - should be easy to see if that is the case by trying the fit.

 

[Juan Maritime]

Big shout out to all the helpful suggestions! The gudgeons are bolt through and the bottom is easy and the top "doable". I will leave the blocks of wood as is due to the probability of 5200. Inside the transom it has fender washers but the bottom port bolt misses the core reinforcement so backing plates for sure. I have never seen a boat with pintels on the transom and cannot imagine why it would be done that way. It is tough enough refitting a dislodged rudder when all you have to do is spear the gudgeon while everything is floating in different planes.

 

[isaksp00]

Good point about fitting the rudder. I only do it once per season, but since the tops of the pintles both line up with the gudgeon bottom at the same time, it is hard to position so both holes line up at the same time as the rudder wants to float up. My pintles are fairly long, extending probably 1.5 in above the gudgeon when rudder is in place. I have been thinking of grinding one pintle down about 1/3 in, probably the top one, so I can slide the lower gudgeon over its (now relatively longer) pintle, and then lower it a bit while positioning the top one. I can't think of any downside to that...

 

[Juan Maritime]

Motoring in relatively shallows to pick up a mooring, I had the swing keel up. A large powerboat wake caused my boat to strike bottom, dislodging the bottom pintel of the rudder. The top one, a bit longer, was kept in place by a ring clip. I was singlehanding and had a very hard time recovering steerage as every passing boat introduced a new wake to deal with. Subsequently I prefer to put a clip on both pintel when possible.

I have not seen and cannot see pintels mounted on the transom and gudgeons on the rudder as mentioned earlier in the thread. It could only work if the pintels were pointed upward, it seems to me. I have never seen pintels that could mount on a flat surface or gudgeons that had a bracket to accomodate a rudder. Maybe I need to get out more. But if it were possible to find such hardware I would still ask, "why"?

 

[Will Gilmore]

You should just need a pin on the short pintel.

- Will (Dragonfly)

 

[Crazy Dave Condon]

The transom is what we called in the industry a reverse transom meaning that it sloped toward the front of the boat or bow. The standard slope is generally up and down as I would say to novices. The actual housing sloped with the transom but the gudgeons were attached to the hull with a plastic sometimes I refer to as starboard spacer with stainless steel bolts that were affixed inside the transom with large washers and bolts thru metal straps to distribute the load. The reason for the spacers so the rudder blade when fully deployed downward would be far enough out so not to hit the bottom of the transom where it meets the hull. I would never use wood spacers as you are only asking for trouble with rot from water regardless if teak or marine ply. I used starboard. Of course I used 5200 where the bolts went thru the transom.

Anything else I would shy away other than to use larger metal plates to distribute the load better in the transom storage area wall.

 

[isaksp00]

"I have not seen and cannot see pintels mounted on the transom and gudgeons on the rudder as mentioned earlier in the thread. It could only work if the pintels were pointed upward, it seems to me. I have never seen pintels that could mount on a flat surface or gudgeons that had a bracket to accomodate a rudder."
I think most hanging rudders have the pintle on the rudder and the gudgeon mounted to the transom, where the pintle has straps alongside either side of the rudder, in which case of course the pins point down. I assume the 23 is reversed as they built the gudgeons into the aluminum rudder head assembly itself, and of course it then does (as in your boat) have upward facing pintles. If you do a search for pintles, such as on rigrite, some are transom mounted.

 

[Crazy Dave Condon]

It has been a Long time since being around a H 23 but memory serves me there should be two brackets that have pintels as part of the two identical brackets facing upward and the rudder assembly which had two knobs with holes sticking out went into those pintels on top of the bracket and secured by a ring or clip. I think the rudder had to be removed in order to put the telescoping mast carrier on those pintels . The question should there be spacers between the boat and those two brackets and I cannot remember but as a former dealer I would suggest starboard over any wood as the spacers. I went back to the photo above and sure as bippy, there they are.

 

[isaksp00]

That is correct. Dave - a pair of transom mounted upward facing pintles, like what you see in the photos (or a somewhat different design like on mine). You can see the aluminum extensions welded to the front of the rudder bracket in his photo, that have holes to form the gudgeons. Mine has no retainers or clips; I added a standard electrical strain relief fitting - the kind you'd insert in a hole in an electrical circuit box and then feed the romex through it to clamp it. I just use the two clamp screws to clamp the thing to the top pintle a tad above the gudgeon.

 

[Juan Maritime]

Lots of good info and thanks to all who offered insight. The rudder cassette comes from a different H23. The spacing of the gudgeons welded to the cassette is slightly larger than the receiving gudgeons bolted through the transom. No pintels on either side of the equation. My thought is to bolt the cassette on and remove only the rudder for trailering. That will necessitate an alteration to the existing mast crutch but a very small to-do compared to removing those wood blocks and learning later they were added for some reason. Still considering a change out to J24 gudgeons on the transom, at least the lower one that is easy to access. It needs to be lower by a half an inch or so to accommodate the spacing on the cassette I acquired. In the current set up the cassette gudgeons fit inside the brackets on the transom. There is a lot of force bearing on two bolts at top and bottom. Four bolts on each, like a J24, and through a beefy backing plate appeals to me. The boat will spend most of its days on the trailer so the wood blocks, which appear fairly new, should not present a problem for years. Still acting in haste and repenting in leisure is the prerogative of fools who rush in so all perspectives are appreciated. Probably should start another thread for this question but wondering if anyone has experience launching an H23 wing keel off the trailer with a crane. The keel bolts look to be in great shape but it is all about balance fore and aft and side to side.

 

[isaksp00]

I suspect that the actual pins on your transom mounted pintles have been removed or came out. It looks like, in your photo, that the crutch is fitted to what look like bolts through the pintle bracket itself. It looks like those brackets are of the type shown here on the rigrite site. I don't think the brackets welded to the cassette are intended to be inserted inside the transom brackets - I am guessing that pintle pins should stick up from the top of the bracket and the gudgeons would slide down onto them. That is how mine work, and I have a rudder bracket ("cassette") that looks identical to the one you procured. The only difference is my transom pintles have just a single horizontal "shelf" that the pins are welded to (I don't have a phot and am not near the boat).
Do you mean you'd bolt the rudder bracket to the transom brackets with a bolt going through the two "shelves" of the existing brackets, with the gudgeon pieces inside these? You could do that, but I'd look for a stainless bolt of the right diameter to fit the holes in the gudgeons, and long enough to stick up above the upper part of the pintle bracket - say, about 3 in higher. Or pay a welder to weld a pin of the right diam to each bracket so it sticks up. Or just buy a pair of new transom mounted pintles like in the link. Given the ones on your boat match the size of a now disused rudder bracket, you may have to re position one or both pintles to match your new bracket, and may also have to adjust the crutch "gudgeons" to match that (should be easy for a welder). Sealing the existing holes in the transom and drilling new ones should be easy, just use epoxy and maybe some cloth on the inside.