DIY rudder fittings

Petros,

Now that would have been fun, a broken rudder can ruin your entire day eh!

There is always good and bad in any situation, now for instance, take one of those nice ships in the shipping lane, if they were to run you down, at least you would have only slightly scratched the duco!

 

I've sailed without a rudder, both intentionally and not.

Most modern sailboats are very poorly designed to balance under the plan alone. The wetted surface and the lateral area reduction marathon, that has taken place in the last 40 years, has made balanced sailing lines a thing of the past.

I can assure you, that losing a rudder on a planning hull or other, even slightly performance oriented hull form, built after the CCA days, will reward you with untold frustration and a beast that wants to broach spite of your best efforts.

This isn't to say you could toss over a thousand feet of warp, maybe with every undogged down bit of gear you have aboard, to help control your down hill decent wouldn't help. But many aren't experienced enough to think about drogues, especially when panicking over the rudder floating 100 yards astern.

In other words, most underwater profiles today (since the 70's) are counting heavily on the lateral area of the rudder, which typically is about 10% of the total area. Remove 10% of your lateral area well aft and you have a lee witch, that will test the abilities of the best.

 

This sailboat was built for a fun race. My rudder happens to be about 25 percent of the dagger board area.

And yes it was quite a hand full when the rudder fitting failed. Fortuanty I had the tiller in my hand and I did not lose the rudder assembly. Half of my old rudder fitting is at the bottom the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I was able to wedge the rudder into a sturdy handle I built into the transom to make car-topping easier (I added the handle/tie down point as an after thought). And I was able to hold it in place so we could set a reverse coarse back to the quickly receding beach we had launched from.

The race I built the boat for is a $50 sailboat race. No rules except it has to be wind powered and you can not spend more that $50 building it. Most people enter crude rafts made from junk with a blue tarp sail. I built a pretty slick little sloop with all salvaged materials, I spent about $35 total for glue and plated deck screws, and a few small fittings. I made most of the hardware from junk. It has clear doug-fir stringers, steam bent white oak ribs, a laminated pine dagger board and rudder, and a laminated doug-fir mast. The sails are made of Tyvek (house wrap). I have not entered it yet because I did not have it ready in time for last years event in late July. So I have to wait until next summer, and I still have to make a spinnaker for it. And than after that, I am going to build a catamaran to enter in 2009!

It was a fun creative effort just to see how cheap a usable sailboat can be built. Who says sailing has to be expensive?

Below is my daughter and I in it at first launch (before the trip with the rudder fitting failure).
[/IMG]

 

Not my design, I hasten to add, but the Gunboat 48 has these nice units.

http://gunboat.info/gallery_48/pages/_Y6L0008.htm

Pericles

 

What you weld up yourself is usually far stronger that what they could ever afford to build commercially made ones for . I build all my own rudder fittings. All it takes is a welder and a grinder and a bit of scrap stainless.Poly hose barbs make good bushings. They cost about 39 cents each.
Brent