Lee,
He could try repairing it Danny. A couple of years ago a fellow in Russia fixed the spade rudder on his O'Day 32 while communicating with the guys on this forum. I tried fixing my rudder blade twice and it broke in half on me one day out in the bay. If I was Lee, I would build a new rudder to the specs of the old one. If he feels that he can repair the old rudder, he could go ahead and do that. If it fails on him, he'll still have the other blade to use.
Lee,
Welcome to the club of O'Day owners with broken rudder blades. It's the nature of the beasts. :cussing: I went through two rudder blades before I had D&R Marine make me a solid one which, knock on wood is still going strong. The O'Day Company had a supplier for these inferior rudders down in Florida. They molded the blades in two halves, glued them together and pumped them with foam. This rudder blade issue wasn't just on the O'Day 25s and 222s like mine. The spade rudders on the 40's and other large boats were also breaking. I wonder if this company could qualify for a bail out today?
If I were you Lee, I'd construct a new rudder for it. One of the guys in my club built a spade rudder for a 1974 O'Day 27 that he bought cheap. He built it practically from scratch using some foam blocks, fiberglass epoxy, a special type of sewn cloth and the filler. He has since sold the boat, but he's never had a problem with the rudder on his O'Day 25. You may want to build your blade out of plywood and use an epoxy with cloth over it. Epoxy is better than Polyester resin as it won't soak up water. The Polyester resin will. One of the guys on this forum built a rudder last year for his O'Day 25. I think his name was Gabriel Donnelly. The threads can be found in the archives I think. Good luck with that!
Joe
That sounds like a plan Lee. I strongly urge you to make a pattern of the rudder and take some measurements before you use it. Although, it's probably not likely that it will break in half like mine did. My blade is a tip up rudder and what happens is when the blade creeps up a 1/4 of an inch or more, it makes the tiller feel like heavy weather helm. In my case, the rudder creped up and flexed enough to cause it to break in half but it was still holding on by threads.
I don't know Rich. I think that the Russian cut the rudder open and Fiberglassed the seam from the inside, and replaced the core with a new one, saturated in epoxy. The seam that goes around these Foss Mfg. rudders was always the problem. Once the water got into the rudder, it would freeze and open it up. This was never the case with my rudder. I think that when my blade crept up, the weather helm pressure caused it to flex and eventually crack and break. Also, the O'Day manual warned against keeping the rudder in a hot place like a car trunk because the foam could melt. They warned against painting it a dark color that would cause it to overheat in the sun. My new rudder blade is solid with no seam around it. Rudy told me that the thinking back then was to make the rudder light so that in the event that it gets lost over the side, it will float. We both agreed that we don't buy that theory. Once they go over the side, they go down to meet Davey Jones. You know Rich? I had two damaged rudder blades down my cellar for years. I didn't know how to repair them, and I didn't have the heart to throw them out. I had gone to the O'Day factory and paid $160 for a replacement blade and only got a couple of years out of it and by then the company had gone under.
