You seem well experienced with this boat. Great pics. Could you please tell me how you anchor the rudder to the bracket. Mine has a nylon bolt whiscrews into the bracket and abuts tightly to the rudder. There were no elastic cords which I see on the beneteau parts list and seems to be used on Beneteau 25.7. Do you use elastic cord? Is there a risk of the rudder coming out of the bracket. Your response would be greatly appreciated.
geof
Geoff,
Since the 1980s Beneteau has used a cassette system to hold transom hung rudders to the boat. In this system, the rudder blade is lowered into an aluminum cassette shaped for the blade. In all cases, the top of the blade is widened to make it IMPOSSIBLE for the rudder to fall all the way through and down the cassette.
The system works well, but sometimes a slight vibration between the cassette and blade might be felt. Beneteau has used two schemes to deal with that.
The system the First 260/25.7 used was a loop of shock cord that laid between the widening at the top of the blade and the cassette. This absorbed the flutter and worked well for years. Our boat has it, you can see it in the pictures below. We don't notice flutter.
Some boats (like the older First 235) used a nylon screw that clamped the blade to one side of the cassette. That was its only purpose; it did not keep the blade from falling out. On the 235 it looked like this.
If you say that the current versions of the First 25s have the screw, I would not worry about it at all. But is it interesting, the first boats did not. Here is an early hull at the Chicago boat show. You can see the bands.
