A hole in the rudder.

[Roger Long]

Why?

The recent rescue of the British couple and other have put emergency steering firmly on my radar screen. Like most foam core rudders, mine one gets some water in it that has to be drained out every fall. If the water should penetrate to the weld where the steel plates that transfer the steering torque from the stock to the rudder should fail, the stock could end up turning freely in the rudder. The rudder would still be attached to the boat but the multiple ways I have of turning the rudder stock would still leave me without steering. This simple expedient leaves me with a way of getting lines attached to the rudder that can be taken up around the hull to the winches to provide emergency steering control. It will also be useful when I remove the rudder someday.

The foam core was removed for about half an inch around the hull between the skins with a bend nail in a drill and replaced with epoxy and chopped fiberglass. A threaded PVC pipe nipple was then epoxied into the hole, ground flush, and rounded in the inside corner to protect the emergency steering lines from chafe. For a long offshore passage, I can pre-rig lines and tie them off loosely to the self steering gear mount so that steering lines can be rigged without having to go in the water.

I was relieved to find how dense the foam used in this rudder is when I removed the plug. It's about the consistency of soft pine and was nearly as hard to strip out with the bent nail in the drill. I injected the voids I could find with epoxy using West system fillable caulking gun tubes. Bond between skin and foam appeared solid in all the critical spots even before epoxy injection.

 

[Ross]

Roger, years ago I worked for a man who told of doing this on a wooden boat in Long Island Sound when the tiller head broke. He said that drilling a hole in wet oak while in the water was the hardest work he ever faced.

 

[Roger Long]

He said that drilling a hole in wet oak while in the water was the hardest work he ever faced.

Imagine drilling it in wet fiberglass while swimming around in water northeast of Maine!

 

[Tim R.]

Roger, I am no engineer but is there enough structure there to support the types of loads you may encounter while sailing or motoring?

 

[Roger Long]

Roger, I am no engineer but is there enough structure there to support the types of loads you may encounter while sailing or motoring?

If you consider that boats this size (and in fact some E 32's) are often steered with tillers, you can get a pretty good idea of the loads. They would be just a bit more than twice what they would be on a tiller.

This would be for an emergency, get home, situtuation. I wouldn't expect to sail hard or power at full speed. The rope steering arrangements wouldn't be very conducive to that anyway.

 

[Ross]

When I am motoring I can just nudge the wheel a little left or right to maintain course. I use 1/4" stay-set x on a 12 inch quadrant with a 16 inch wheel and a 3 inch drum to steer my boat.

 

[Ross]

Imagine drilling it in wet fiberglass while swimming around in water northeast of Maine!

I don't think a bit brace would be the best choice of tools.

 

[BobM]

Roger,

How do you plan to distribute the load onto the surface of the rudder? I wouldn't want to apply to much localized force to that nipple. I am assuming you will need to knot your rigged lines close to the rudder on either side, but perhaps I am missing something. It is pretty early in the am still.

 

[Roger Long]

How do you plan to distribute the load onto the surface of the rudder?

The two rudder skins are tied together by 3/8 - 1/2 inch of solid glass and epoxy fill. The nipple is primarily for chafe protection and to make a neat looking hole. If nothing was rigged when it was needed, I would probably run a line through from each side with a big knot in the end. Before something like a transatlantic crossing, I might pre-rig lines and tie them off to the self-steering gear mount.

Remember, this is a back up to a backup to a backup for last ditch effort at limping back to safety. I would expect to be doing it slowly and keeping minimal strain on it like any jury rudder.

 

[BobM]

As I said...it was pretty early...

So two lines, not one and you would pass at least a small line through before a trip just in case you had to use it. Sounds good to me.

Before a transatlantic crossing I'd rebuild my rudder or buy a new one built to my satisfaction. You mention failure of the attachment of the plate from the rudder post, but rudder construction is often worse even than that.

I know you can buy new from Foss Foam and that they manufacture for many boat builders. However, I visited their website and was actually a bit disturbed by the finger design they present in their rudder construction photos. The photos show what appear to be four small 6-8 inch stubs to take the load of what appears to be a large rudder.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to go out of my way to diss Foss, but it doesn't look very strong in my opinion. I have never done business with them.

http://www.boatrudder.com/rudders.htm#top

On my old L25, another owner posted a photo showing a stainless plate welded down its whole length with a hole in the middle to reduce weight. That seems like a more sensible approach to me. Were I to order one I would probably specify the plate approach as well as a solid rudder stock (which my S2 does have).

http://www.boatrudder.com/rudders.htm#top

 

[Roger Long]

The photos show what appear to be four small 6-8 inch stubs to take the load of what appears to be a large rudder.

Those round bolt fingers don't look like much bearing area to me either. For years though, standard construction was to drill the stock and have long through bolts running through the planks that made up the rudder. They had to take the compression of swelling and it also put the tension part of the structure in the middle and the compression part on the outside which is backwards engineering. It was the resistance of the bolts to bending that steered a lot of wooden boats.

I'd rather have a large metal plate myself to distribute the load over a large area of foam.

I'm more confident about my rudder no after having drilled out the plug for the hole and drilled some other test holes. Still, when a couple hours work can give you a recovery option from a possible failure, the feeling alone is worth the effort.