309 Sticky Rudder

[Siamese]

2007 Catalina 309 is on her 6th season in Michigan, and her rudder has become difficult to turn. I had noticed it was taking more effort to turn the wheel, so I disconnected the steering system, and found that the wheel spins very freely, which would indicate it's not the steering system.

I connected the emergency tiller and found that it's difficult to turn the rudder with it. I dove under the boat to see if something might be wrapped around the rudder. Nope. It was difficult to turn the rudder from underwater (cold, too!).

The only change I've made to the boat lately is to adjust her rigging. I used a Loos gauge and adjusted the backstay to 15% of breaking strength. Can't imagine that's the problem.

I'm inclined at this point to give the marina service department a call and haul her for repair. Just wondering if anyone has any other insight on this. I do the majority of upkeep, but I'm pretty clueless on rudders.

 

[FastOlson]

Hard to imagine that tensioning up the rig would bend your hull enough to bind the rudder shaft... easy to find out, tho.
Back off the backstay and see if the symptom persists...
(mark the threads so you will know where to restore the setting)
If you have a rigging gauge, check for # acheived. I have a hydraulic adjuster (SailTec) and run ours up to about 2K # for going to weather, but back it off some for other points, and leave it a a few hundred when docked.
A SWAG of your wire strength is about 8K # and 15% would then be a modest 1200#. Unless your hull is really turning into a banana when you power up the rig
that should not be a problem. After tens of thousands of hulls, Catalina is presumably building well-engineered hulls.

Plan B: is there a zerk fitting for greasing the rudder shaft? We have one, and it's a bit difficult to see/reach...

Plan C: Don't know whether logs or other semi-floating stuff is prevalent in your waters, but sometimes an innocuous "thump" into a log will slightly bend the rudder shaft on most any make of boat. Usually leading to a haulout, rudder drop, straightening, and reassembly... and the writting of a check. Ick.

Best of luck,
L

 

[Siamese]

Kudos to Catalina for spending 45 minutes on the phone with me about my rudder. They emailed me detailed drawing of the entire assembly, so at least I have a better understanding of how it works.

My marina wants $512.00 to haul and relaunch, but according to Catalina I can actually lower the rudder a few inches the slip, and possibly find the problem. Something I hadn't considered was that the rudder floats, so there's no chance of it falling to the bottom of the lake.

So, I'm going to go at it in the slip.