Rudder Failures

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

Yes - but the flip side of that coin is that this production boat survived a serious collision with a rock - and got her crew home safely.

Of course that's going to damage a boat! The much more interesting and applicable aspect of this story in relation to this thread is that she didn't fall apart and sink like she was supposed to!

And I really like this part:

Go The Plexus!






No failure with the bond. Hmmm.

I'd say, score another for production boats.

We are going to have to buy you a green sailing beanie to go with your glue. You should sail in Lake of the Woods...they hit rocks there like its a game and very few actually come to grief. I noticed in your article they had to cut parts away so they could properly glass it back in place.
Each hit is very unique actually, some really ruin the structure and others bounce off and keep going, its a game of luck.

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

Sailing from Mexico to the Marquesas may take 25 days, but it doesn't put as much wear on the boat as the Baja Bash, which is 8 days dead upwind.

The problem with glued boats is that they are less forgiving under shock loads, such as hitting a rock at hull speed. I watched the Sunsail yard repair a Bene Cyclades which had hit a rock in Turkey. The glue joints between the hull and liner had parted, and they had to put the boat back together with glass tabbing. After they were done they figured it would have been cheaper to buy a new boat.

Hey Don,
You may be right, certainly bashing to weather is always tougher on boats but as you go rolling down the trades the hull and rig are going through cycles each time it rolls and it really loads the rudder as well which usually sees less load going to weather. Either way sailing offshore 24/7 is tough on boats. Every damn time I have done a crossing I end up with 20 new items on my job list. You should stay away from that Baja Bash, its not good for ya.

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

We are going to have to buy you a green sailing beanie to go with your glue. You should sail in Lake of the Woods...they hit rocks there like its a game and very few actually come to grief. I noticed in your article they had to cut parts away so they could properly glass it back in place.
Each hit is very unique actually, some really ruin the structure and others bounce off and keep going, its a game of luck.

There's only one "beanie" out there that's worth a damn - and it's blue:



Heh-heh.

Also, it's funny how things can be read in various ways. The article says that "The bonding flanges were cut away at the base of the stiffeners to allow further inspection of the hull laminate and to insure there was no further delamination under the stiffeners themselves".

Then, if you actually take the time to read the article instead of relying on a single snippet, you'll see that they cut out the stiffener that had been damaged.



So, in this case, because they were going to tab the new section into place along with the existing stiffeners (and laminate panels between the stiffeners), they apparently felt that "It was also essential to cut away the flanges to properly glass in the stiffeners."

Now, that last sentence probably gives Neil, You, and Minaret a slight tingle down below, but you have to ask yourself - if the bond at the stiffeners did not fail when the keel slammed into a rock, and instead, the stiffener and surrounding laminate itself cracked (just like the thesis report I posted in the other thread predicted would happen), do you actually think they are saying that they did the above to address some flaw in the bonding? I don't think so.

In fact, one might argue that they actually weakened the boat by cutting away this bonding and "properly glassing" everything.

Again, this is a brilliant example of very strong, very good construction in the original production boat. Good on Jeanneau.

[neilpride]

Hoo boy!! The main point Smack is.... i post the link to show how expensive and hard labor is a grounding in a grid liner lay out, sure at hull speed, well in my old c&c i touch it hard 2 times, one in the Ft Lauderdale Canals, in low tide at hull speed because we run out of time to pass the last bridge , we bounce a underwater pipe, the boat just bounce hard and raise and fall down with the shock, damage limited to a dent in the lead, nothing inside despite hours looking for damage, the second grounding took place in turk and caicos and with a rock, the previous repair fail with this hit, so at the end mostly lead damage, the pictures show again how badly and thin this boats are made it, if you take again a close inspection at the pictures you can see all the keel bolts are bolted to the flat hul área, no one troughbolted to a sturdy piece of beam or stringer, quite regular in this boats, nice fin keel and nice speed, not made for groundings... and cruising boats sooner or later touch, oh yes they touch the bottom...

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

Again, this is a brilliant example of very strong, very good construction in the original production boat. Good on Jeanneau.

I don't know when you're joking and when not. I assume in this post not.

If the boat was so well made and protected the crew so well and the repair just made the boat worse off why even bother to repair it? Just keep on sailing around the world.

Sheesh....

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

I don't know when you're joking and when not. I assume in this post not.

If the boat was so well made and protected the crew so well and the repair just made the boat worse off why even bother to repair it? Just keep on sailing around the world.

Sheesh....

Would you just keep sailing around the world if you hit a rock at high speed...regardless of the make of boat you're in?

[Painted Skies]

Originally Posted by malbert73

Tartan had a blip, but overall they have produced a pretty well designed and built series of boats. My T40 is certainly one of those in my opinion, though I only have 5 months of it after upsizing this summer.

My Tartan, while not perfect (none are) is in another class of build quality, and this matters to me. Looking at details of chainplate supports, bulkhead tabbing, keel bolt placement, joinerwork, rudder post reinforcement, among others- really no comparison. Sure, biased, but I also chose it over a bunch of other boats at similar prices, many newer more mass production-esque. Read up on the pedigree of the S&S design, and it's construction quality and bluewater manners and design...

I've found this rudder discussion over the past month informative, but quite honestly, I could not quite manage to sift through all 75 pages of it. My apologies... This topic has definitely struck a chord with many folks – and from the pages I did read, there were many valid comments on the construction and design of modern rudders; IMHO, some of the best analysis was provided by UNCIVILIZED in the early posts of this thread.

Now, a story about a Tartan rudder:

Rudder failure is probably one of the most feared of all possible failures at sea – as it often results in the boat sinking. I am an engineer by education, and have lived/sailed aboard for the past 24 years - but that certainly doesn't make me any sort of expert on rudders... so I apologize in advance if I offend any of the experts in this forum. All I have to offer is real world experience with the rudder on our 1990 Tartan 412 in the hopes that it might help others, like us, who are simply cruisers and/or are looking to purchase a sailboat.

When we bought our Tartan in 2004, the boat had lived a pampered life – first on the Great Lakes where it sat for most of its first six years at the Tartan facility, having various work done on it - and being burglarized in the process (all the electronics were stolen). The owners we bought it from, used the boat sparingly out of Massachusetts each summer for a couple weeks and then had the mast removed each October, with the hull stored inside a shed. Hence, I don't believe it was an abused nor neglected boat.

Our surveyor for the purchase noted a crack that extended down the leading edge of the spade rudder, starting from the point where the fiberglass collar surrounds the rudder post (see photos with white arrows). It was oozing a bit of rust.

We sailed the boat home from Rhode Island in November, knowing that the rudder would need attention during the next haul-out. Over a winter of freezing and thawing at our dock on the Chesapeake Bay, the rudder separation enlarged and the rust from internal corrosion increased. By the next summer, we decided it was beyond repair (seawater had deteriorated the internal supports) and a new rudder was in order. We contacted the factory and placed an order (they still had the original mold). I think it was about 4 months later when it was ready, so we drove out to Ohio to pick it up. It wasn't actually ready; in fact, they had hardly started it. We went to visit family in NY and came back a week later when it was finally done. Then we tried to install it. It didn't fit.

The old rudder had been constructed from 3-inch stainless steel tubing with a tight diameter tolerance along its length; the replacement was built with 3-inch stainless steel pipe stock. Thus, the bearings would not slip over the rudder post. Of course, we called the factory for resolution and the problem fell on deaf ears. Twice, we delivered the rudder to a local machine shop to be machined into a range that fit the bearing ring and upper housing. Even with that resolved, the collar on the new rudder interfered with the hull entry point – and upon inspection of the old rudder we found that the Tartan factory had originally solved this problem by grinding down part of the original rudder to force a fit – obviously, no one at the factory had ever noted this on the engineering drawings. Configuration control, it is called – I don't think they knew the meaning of the concept.

For the next two years, the boat sat at the dock. Then in 2007 we sailed to the Bahamas and experienced a near-disaster in the remote Jumentos when in rough seas, the rudder post slipped almost out of the upper housing; later analysis revealed that the rudder post had been constructed 2 inches too short (rudder had to be removed, and 2 more inches of SS tubing welded in place).

Just three years after installation of the the new rudder (2008), a crack developed in the exact same place as the original rudder – down the leading edge of the rudder post collar. Fortunately, we caught the failure before we lost the rudder in some catastrophic manner. It was ground out, repaired and substantially reinforced before crossing the Pacific in 2009. During the most recent haul-out in Australia; the reinforced rudder displays no splitting nor rust issues.

I know, this is a long and sordid tale of bad rudder design, and bad manufacturing – by one of the supposed better production boat companies. We'd all like to think that modern manufacturing methods entail precise engineering specifications, exacting materials standards, and industry-mandated quality assurance. Think again. Unlike the automotive industry that has its watchdogs, product recalls and class action lawsuits, we as boat owners must rely on our own due diligence to recognize the earliest signs of failure in our vessel's systems and take steps to ameliorate them regardless of where the fault resides.

A yacht broker once told me – 'Most boat manufacturers build their vessels for the first owners, and those buyers typically will only own it for 3 years and then move up.' The implication was: boat builders don't make them to last because they don't have to; that is not where the money is... and this is particularly true of many modern 'Clorox-bottles' that are built to be inexpensive to purchase, fast on the water, glamorous-looking on the pages of 'Cruising World' and super-profitable for the builders and brokers.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by Painted Skies

I've found this rudder discussion over the past month informative, but quite honestly, I could not quite manage to sift through all 75 pages of it. My apologies... This topic has definitely struck a chord with many folks – and from the pages I did read, there were many valid comments on the construction and design of modern rudders; IMHO, some of the best analysis was provided by UNCIVILIZED in the early posts of this thread.

Now, a story about a Tartan rudder:

Rudder failure is probably one of the most feared of all possible failures at sea – as it often results in the boat sinking. I am an engineer by education, and have lived/sailed aboard for the past 24 years - but that certainly doesn't make me any sort of expert on rudders... so I apologize in advance if I offend any of the experts in this forum. All I have to offer is real world experience with the rudder on our 1990 Tartan 412 in the hopes that it might help others, like us, who are simply cruisers and/or are looking to purchase a sailboat.

When we bought our Tartan in 2004, the boat had lived a pampered life – first on the Great Lakes where it sat for most of its first six years at the Tartan facility, having various work done on it - and being burglarized in the process (all the electronics were stolen). The owners we bought it from, used the boat sparingly out of Massachusetts each summer for a couple weeks and then had the mast removed each October, with the hull stored inside a shed. Hence, I don't believe it was an abused nor neglected boat.

Our surveyor for the purchase noted a crack that extended down the leading edge of the spade rudder, starting from the point where the fiberglass collar surrounds the rudder post (see photos with white arrows). It was oozing a bit of rust.

We sailed the boat home from Rhode Island in November, knowing that the rudder would need attention during the next haul-out. Over a winter of freezing and thawing at our dock on the Chesapeake Bay, the rudder separation enlarged and the rust from internal corrosion increased. By the next summer, we decided it was beyond repair (seawater had deteriorated the internal supports) and a new rudder was in order. We contacted the factory and placed an order (they still had the original mold). I think it was about 4 months later when it was ready, so we drove out to Ohio to pick it up. It wasn't actually ready; in fact, they had hardly started it. We went to visit family in NY and came back a week later when it was finally done. Then we tried to install it. It didn't fit.

The old rudder had been constructed from 3-inch stainless steel tubing with a tight diameter tolerance along its length; the replacement was built with 3-inch stainless steel pipe stock. Thus, the bearings would not slip over the rudder post. Of course, we called the factory for resolution and the problem fell on deaf ears. Twice, we delivered the rudder to a local machine shop to be machined into a range that fit the bearing ring and upper housing. Even with that resolved, the collar on the new rudder interfered with the hull entry point – and upon inspection of the old rudder we found that the Tartan factory had originally solved this problem by grinding down part of the original rudder to force a fit – obviously, no one at the factory had ever noted this on the engineering drawings. Configuration control, it is called – I don't think they knew the meaning of the concept.

For the next two years, the boat sat at the dock. Then in 2007 we sailed to the Bahamas and experienced a near-disaster in the remote Jumentos when in rough seas, the rudder post slipped almost out of the upper housing; later analysis revealed that the rudder post had been constructed 2 inches too short (rudder had to be removed, and 2 more inches of SS tubing welded in place).

Just three years after installation of the the new rudder (2008), a crack developed in the exact same place as the original rudder – down the leading edge of the rudder post collar. Fortunately, we caught the failure before we lost the rudder in some catastrophic manner. It was ground out, repaired and substantially reinforced before crossing the Pacific in 2009. During the most recent haul-out in Australia; the reinforced rudder displays no splitting nor rust issues.

I know, this is a long and sordid tale of bad rudder design, and bad manufacturing – by one of the supposed better production boat companies. We'd all like to think that modern manufacturing methods entail precise engineering specifications, exacting materials standards, and industry-mandated quality assurance. Think again. Unlike the automotive industry that has its watchdogs, product recalls and class action lawsuits, we as boat owners must rely on our own due diligence to recognize the earliest signs of failure in our vessel's systems and take steps to ameliorate them regardless of where the fault resides.

A yacht broker once told me – 'Most boat manufacturers build their vessels for the first owners, and those buyers typically will only own it for 3 years and then move up.' The implication was: boat builders don't make them to last because they don't have to; that is not where the money is... and this is particularly true of many modern 'Clorox-bottles' that are built to be inexpensive to purchase, fast on the water, glamorous-looking on the pages of 'Cruising World' and super-profitable for the builders and brokers.

Great post. I wonder if the culprit was water intrusion and freezing while dry stored or just a rudder made in two halves.... the joint being where it broke. Either way, just another example of builders not solving problems that are evident throughout the industry... and continuing to build things that WILL fail.... under the guise of "modern design".

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by Painted Skies

A yacht broker once told me – 'Most boat manufacturers build their vessels for the first owners, and those buyers typically will only own it for 3 years and then move up.' The implication was: boat builders don't make them to last because they don't have to; that is not where the money is...

Fantastic post, paint. Thanks.

Also, I think the broker has it right. That makes perfect sense, obviously. It should be part of the conversation...increasingly so as time passes.

[neilpride]

Thx for the pictures, add it to the collection for the record and your post to, so i can keep in mind for future references or asked info about Tartan, by the way i dont feel the Tartan like a super example of quality, they made really fine hulls, i think the latest in epoxy vacumm infused etc.. but they have isues , isues by design, like a 3700 who come to our rigging shop after a horrendous sail from Bermuda with the furler hanging in one side, to be honest the Autoclave cured, prepreg carbon-fiber mast is a piece of ****, sorry if i offend someone, who have the brilliant idea in Tartan to made a 4 mm thick chainplate the same thicknes as a cheap washer and a rigging togle with a wide diameter about a inch and half?

Top of the line Haren furler with a forestay terminal T type hooked in a hollow tang screwed in the carbón, to here all fine until in Tartan decide or forget to fit in the tang a small plate to prevent the T terminal to jump out from the tang, just figúrate why the guys loose the forestay furler 200 miles around Bermuda..we rectify in this mast alone a dozen of serious bugs or defects, in a Brand new Tartan... nice boat, beautiful, but the racing spar just suck , i guess Tartan have 2 mast options for the 3700. one for perfomance and another for serious cruising.

[neilpride]

Back on rudders, if anyone is interested in a replacement or just dream with a Carbon fiber rudder. Take a look at this company.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...GGNSdlkqazDfyg

[avb3]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

.....................
My Hunter doesn't have a crapload of teak I have to maintain. The Swan rates 120 (N.E. PHRF). My Hunter rates 96. My Hunter is very comfy down below - the Swan is cramped. I have a huge aft cabin with centerline berth (like your Bristol), the Swan has a couple of aft quarterberths. .....

Just wondering, where do you think the best place to install lee clothes on your Hunter would be?

[RTB]

Originally Posted by avb3

Just wondering, where do you think the best place to install lee clothes on your Hunter would be?

Don't fall for the bait, smack. And just as things were getting back on topic too. Bad avb3!

Ralph

[avb3]

Originally Posted by RTB

Don't fall for the bait, smack. And just as things were getting back on topic too. Bad avb3!

Ralph

It's a legitimate question. I have pondered the same with my boat, and actually came up with an answer. And quarterberths are a great substitute.

[RTB]

Originally Posted by avb3

It's a legitimate question. I have pondered the same with my boat, and actually came up with an answer. And quarterberths are a great substitute.

Fair enough. Not baiting? Ok, still has nothing to do with rudders. I realize this thread has a meandering path, so doesn't matter I suppose.

Ralph