Yeah interesting that it's..
Just about what I said in my first post. Even with veteran life long ocean racers and a world renowned yacht designer on board, they could not steer the boat without the ruder on JUST sails! Here are some interesting out takes from the link about the keel boat that lost it's rudder.
From the CW Article:
"Owing to her New Zealand heritage, Serengeti carried an unusual drogue called a Sea Claw from Coppins Sea Anchors (www.paraseaanchor. com), a Kiwi company specializing in emergency gear. It was immediately deployed and for most of the time did a reasonable, though not exceptional, job of keeping the stern to the wind and seas. The main had been dropped immediately after the incident, but someone came up with the idea of hoisting the storm jib to give us some speed and also to counteract the cork-screw effect the drogue had on the stern.
This proved to be a stroke of genius. Not only did this boost our boat speed to a solid 3 knots; the tiny sail also kept us more or less directly on course for Nassau. Every time the bow came into the breeze, the sheeted-home jib would back and send the boat into a controlled jibe. Once on the new board, the sail would fill, and the boat would accelerate until the bow again wandered toward the wind, whereupon the whole process would repeat itself. In this manner, pivoting around its nearly 14-foot keel and slaloming down a heading that wandered through about 30 degrees, Serengeti held an average course straight toward Nassau.
When it was all over, I asked Bill Tripp what he'd learned. His answers were insightful. "I'd never needed a drogue before and now realize how important they can be," he said.
"The drogue we had wouldn't stay submerged when we were going fast enough. That was a real problem, a double-edged sword. Because you need the sails to steer, and the sails make you go fast, we had to put on as little sail as possible and not have the boat go more than 4 knots. Our drogue popped out of the water at 3.5 knots. We needed one that worked at 6 knots. When you have a following sea, speed is better than no speed. The less speed you have, the more the waves are throwing the boat around."
All in all, Tripp described the incident as an eye-opening experience. "In the design process, you can't imitate a boat without a rudder. It isn't possible," he said. "I've done all the Newport-Bermuda Race tests where you have to prove you have emergency steering, and you do that by lashing the wheel and then dragging a spinnaker pole back and forth [off the transom]. And you can do that in flat water; it works fine. Out at sea, it doesn't, particularly if you have to go dead downwind. "
As I said sailing with a rudder lashed is not necessarily good practice for sailing without one and you really can't predict how the boat will handle without one. Even Bill Trip, the guy who designed it, couldn't predict this or get the boat home by sails alone and needed a drogue..
