1984 222 Ruder setup
- Thread starter mfiorillo
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Hi Stuart,
I can only offer info on my 1986 O'Day 222 tip up rudder. The tip up rudder blade on these boats can be a pain in that they were manufactured by a company for O'Day and their construction methods of the blades leave a lot to be desired.
In essence what they did was mold the blade in two halves. Then the halve were adhered together and the blade was pumped with foam. Consequently over a period of time the blade would separate at the seam and break. I broke two of them, so I know about this first hand.
I later had a new solid blade made up by D&R Marine back in the mid 1990s.
If you have the original blade on your boat and it's in need of repair, you may be able to repair it yourself.
I modified my rudder years ago by lowering the pintles which provided more area at the top of the rudder head to accommodate an O'Day 25 tiller. I added a couple of stops to the sides of the head to support the tiller from rubbing against the top of the transom of my boat. I made up the stops from a couple of Aluminum storm door "L'' brackets that can be found in any hardware store. The tiller clears the top of the transom with enough space for the rudder blade hold-down pendant line that runs to a fair lead clam cleat which is attached to under side of the tiller.
The biggest problem with the rudder hold-down pendant line is that it can sometimes get caught in between the inside of the rudder head and the blade when the rudder is up and you try to pull on the line to get it down.
This can be a pain because the rope gets caught and you need to reach down over the transom to free it and get the rope on to the upper bout of the blade in order to get it to work properly.
O'Day knew of this problem and what they did to solve it was add a 12"X 3/16" bungee cord to the pendant line by crimping a hog ring to it. What this does is; it puts tension on the pendant line on the upper bout of the blade to center it when the blade pops up. This may or may not alleviate the problem altogether. I had to do a lot of adjustment on the rudder head to eliminate the problem altogether.
One of the other mods I did to my rudder was to provide it with a rudder blade hold-up pendant line.
When I launch my boat I hang the rudder first. Then I set the hold-up rope and tie the tiller off so that the rudder is centered. This is a heck of a lot easier than mounting the rudder after the boat is in the water. Not only that, but when I Moor or anchor my boat I always keep the rudder blade in the up position.
Your boat might drift to shore and your blade is less likely to get damaged if the blade is up. This happened to me a few weeks ago in a well protected island cove anchored in shallow water. Winds of 60 mph came up with driving rain and thunder and lightning. This wind came up 180 degrees of the direction of pull of my FX 11 Fortress anchor. It pulled right out and as my boat swung around and the next thing I knew we were on the shore against the reeds. No rocks in her path, thank God and I had the rudder blade up so we had no damage. The next time I'll put out a second anchor. Chalk it up to lessons learned.
That storm hit us in the morning and we got hit again at night by another fierce gale in another cove which was rocky and unprotected. This time I waited in the cockpit near the outboard, only I nearly froze my butt off sitting there in my bathing suit. Lessons learned; wear rain gear.
Anyway, here's some pics plus a pdf of a sketch that I made that you can check out and if you have any questions just fire away.
Joe
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222 Rudder
Thanks Joe for the information, I was not able to open the pdf file so when you has some free time please emailed to me at fmario82@hotmail.com thanks for all you help. I sold my 30 Oday a year ago and i purchased the 222 at the same time finally have some time to lunched for some test sailing. Thanks
Thanks Joe for the information, I was not able to open the pdf file so when you has some free time please emailed to me at fmario82@hotmail.com thanks for all you help. I sold my 30 Oday a year ago and i purchased the 222 at the same time finally have some time to lunched for some test sailing. Thanks
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