Moving the rudder aft

[Brent Swain]

Dan and Larry will automatically disagree with anything I say, just for the sake of disagreeing.
Should one only build boats designed by or get ones boat building and design advice from, adults?

[Brent Swain]

I kept the ruder high aspect, to avoid changing the balance too much. With hindsight, I could have gone for a lower aspect ratio.
For a fibreglass boat , the best way would probably be to make a form out of foam, glas it heavily, and make the skeg long enough to run right thru the hull into the cockpit sole. This puts a bending load on the skeg, instead of the load being entirely on the skeg - hull joint, reducing reliance on, and loads on the skeg- hull joint..It also lets one do most of the fibreglassing on a work bench, eliminating most of the overhead fibreglassing.
A sister ship to my pipe dream put a bustle aft of the main rudder, to act as a skeg, which helped a lot , but not as much as moving the rudder aft.
When I read John Neals book "Log of the Mahina" and how he had to sail with a reef in the mainsail to keep the weather helm on his Albin Vega controlable, I thought she was an excellent candidate for an outboard rudder on a skeg.