Rudder nightmare at sea

[goboatingnow]

I don't know if you e ever tried steering a boat with NO rudder not a locked rudder. Most of the " harebrained" schemes assume the rudder is still there but locked.

The fact is drogues are useless , the door and spinnaker pole is doubly useless. Unless you rig a complete replacement rudder of similar size , almost no jury rigged solution is successful where the rudder is lost. This was the experience of the hunter 50 ,even with the advantage of the tall ships tenacious workshops could not succeed in solving , the hunter being subsequently abandoned

Dave

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by Paul Elliott

However, none of this would have helped the OP, who had the rudder shaft snap off at the hull. I also have an emergency tiller, but that only works if I still have a rudder.

The point I was making on the post regarding a spare tiller was part of the overarching picture of planning for a steering system failure. Ta Shing and other manufacturers as was pointed out in a subsequent post, recognize that steering failure is not necessarily having the rudder fall off but rather a failure of the steering linkages and mechanisms. Your point is well taken however.

What was discussed in a number of posts where other backup schemes making way if the rudder does fall off like in the case of the OP. This includes drogues and a spare rudder assembled on board materials.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by MARC D

I don't understand how Lake Superior can make this kind of comments...

Yes you do!

But face it, if you lose your rudder (not just your steering) unless you have a real emergency rudder that has attachments already installed, and have already tried it to be sure it really works, chances of any hair brained jury rigged system working are probably less than the number of boats that lose their rudders.

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I don't know if you e ever tried steering a boat with NO rudder not a locked rudder. Most of the " harebrained" schemes assume the rudder is still there but locked.

The fact is drogues are useless , the door and spinnaker pole is doubly useless. Unless you rig a complete replacement rudder of similar size , almost no jury rigged solution is successful where the rudder is lost. This was the experience of the hunter 50 ,even with the advantage of the tall ships tenacious workshops could not succeed in solving , the hunter being subsequently abandoned

Dave

Tell that to Don Street, 350 miles on a rudder made from a spinnaker pole and teak salon table in a 72 foot mini/maxi off of Hawaii (after googling for about a minute.) Check the other accounts in the same thread all using drogues or expediently built rudders for 100's of miles to make it to port.

Scuttlebutt - Sailing Forum: DISCUSSION: Dock Talk: Lost rudders

Another account (they don't like the spinnaker pole approach.}

Oakcliff Sailing Center | News | Ker 11.3 and The Rest of the Rudder Story!

I found it interesting that in these accounts they preferred not to call for help

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I don't know if you e ever tried steering a boat with NO rudder not a locked rudder. Most of the " harebrained" schemes assume the rudder is still there but locked.

The fact is drogues are useless , [...]

I know a boat that sailed about 1000 miles with a drogue for steering. It was a brand new custom racing boat with twin pintle-and-gudgeon-attached rudders (actually they were bearings and shafts, but they were hanging off the back of the stern). First one rudder let go, then a day later the other came loose. They eventually jury-rigged a way to reattach the rudders with dyneema line, but for about 1000 miles they steered with a bucket off the stern. They hauled it port or starboard with the primary winches.

They made it to Hawaii. True, this was downwind, but the point is they regained some control and reached port. This was in the 2010 Pacific Cup, and the boat was "Condor".

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Paul Elliott

I know a boat that sailed about 1000 miles with a drogue for steering. It was a brand new custom racing boat with twin pintle-and-gudgeon-attached rudders (actually they were bearings and shafts, but they were hanging off the back of the stern). First one rudder let go, then a day later the other came loose. They eventually jury-rigged a way to reattach the rudders with dyneema line, but for about 1000 miles they steered with a bucket off the stern. They hauled it port or starboard with the primary winches.

They made it to Hawaii. True, this was downwind, but the point is they regained some control and reached port. This was in the 2010 Pacific Cup, and the boat was "Condor".

We once towed a hulk that had lost its rudder , damm near impossible, drogues , well fairly home made ones . Simply we're not effective

Dave

[Paul Elliott]

I just looked up the details of the Condor incident. They used a Jordan Series Drogue, and were steering with that for about four days with a boatspeed of about four knots (so they probably went 400 miles, not 1000 as I had remembered). Here's a link to the story: Pressure Drop - Condor's First Flight: The 2010 Pacific Cup

The fact that Condor has a very wide stern probably helped with the drogue-steering.

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by Paul Elliott

However, none of this would have helped the OP, who had the rudder shaft snap off at the hull. I also have an emergency tiller, but that only works if I still have a rudder.

That is what I was thinkin'

[JPA Cate]

Hello, Bluewaters,

First of all, congratulations, you're making heaps of progress. Good on you and your good lady!

I'm now pondering what you can reasonably do to help your boat tow better. I'm sure Nigel 1 might have some really useful thoughts here, but let me tell you what I'd try, and see if it might be applicable for you guys.

We used to tow our 13.5 ft. dingy offshore some of the time (oh, the shame of it, but we did). What we did to keep it stable was to make up a bridle for the dinghy's stern, took an old 3/4 " nylon dock line, into which we threaded 3 cones (a la Jordan series drogue), that I made out of Herculite, a pvc plastic cloth, and shackled an old length of 3/8 chain to that, to hold the Cate drogue down in the water. Now this worked a treat. For more sea miles than I care to admit, and totally eliminated the 180 degrees to the direction of progress problem.

In your situation, I might try to figure out a way to rig the bridle so that it would come aboard forward of the main sheet winches, long enough that you could pull this drogue to either side of the beam of the boat, so as to help the bow be a little to one side of straight into the waves. I think study enough cones can be made from any canvas or even sailcloth, and I would hem the leading edges of these cones down so they don't start raveling With our dinghy, 6 cones was way too many, but perhaps a doable number to start with. I imagine you could get some old rusty chain off the fishermen, too. It doesn't have to be nice for this job, and you can discard or upgrade it when it's convenient.

Good luck with finding solutions, you are getting valuable experiences, and as to some of the tactless, don't let the naysayers wear you down.

Best wishes,

Ann

[Bluewaters2812]

Originally Posted by Paul Elliott

However, none of this would have helped the OP, who had the rudder shaft snap off at the hull. I also have an emergency tiller, but that only works if I still have a rudder.

Absolutely correct ... I too have an emergency tiller. I left it right where it was because it is useless without a rudder. Like a previous poster kindly said ... the Admiral is safe, I am safe, and the boat is safe.

[Bluewaters2812]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Yes you do!

But face it, if you lose your rudder (not just your steering) unless you have a real emergency rudder that has attachments already installed, and have already tried it to be sure it really works, chances of any hair brained jury rigged system working are probably less than the number of boats that lose their rudders.

Spot on

[Bluewaters2812]

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

Hello, Bluewaters,

First of all, congratulations, you're making heaps of progress. Good on you and your good lady!

I'm now pondering what you can reasonably do to help your boat tow better. I'm sure Nigel 1 might have some really useful thoughts here, but let me tell you what I'd try, and see if it might be applicable for you guys.

We used to tow our 13.5 ft. dingy offshore some of the time (oh, the shame of it, but we did). What we did to keep it stable was to make up a bridle for the dinghy's stern, took an old 3/4 " nylon dock line, into which we threaded 3 cones (a la Jordan series drogue), that I made out of Herculite, a pvc plastic cloth, and shackled an old length of 3/8 chain to that, to hold the Cate drogue down in the water. Now this worked a treat. For more sea miles than I care to admit, and totally eliminated the 180 degrees to the direction of progress problem.

In your situation, I might try to figure out a way to rig the bridle so that it would come aboard forward of the main sheet winches, long enough that you could pull this drogue to either side of the beam of the boat, so as to help the bow be a little to one side of straight into the waves. I think study enough cones can be made from any canvas or even sailcloth, and I would hem the leading edges of these cones down so they don't start raveling With our dinghy, 6 cones was way too many, but perhaps a doable number to start with. I imagine you could get some old rusty chain off the fishermen, too. It doesn't have to be nice for this job, and you can discard or upgrade it when it's convenient.

Good luck with finding solutions, you are getting valuable experiences, and as to some of the tactless, don't let the naysayers wear you down.

Best wishes,

Ann

Thanks for your input and kind words Ann, much appreciated. I am ignoring the negative and focusing on the 99.9% good people who are posting useful and helpful info. I will never be too old to learn and frankly, I started this post with the purpose of sharing so that our fellow sailors can contribute (positively) and perhaps also glean some useful information from the thread.

I will post each time anything new comes to light.

[nigel1]

On the towing aspect, here is an idea based on preventing yawing at anchor.
Hang a drogue from the tow line so that the drogue ends up close to the bow.
No idea if it would work, but these things are worth a try.
Good to hear that the new rudder is sorted.

[bfloyd4445]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

How odd:
"3...."experts" in Le Marin...are of the opinion that sea water ingressed over a period of 2,3 or 4 years, which compromised a section of resin and this is where and why it snapped/failed)."
Seawater? Caused cured resin to fail? I think something has gotten totally lost in the translation. I had thought that properly cured resin was impervious to seawater.

"4. Beneteau have advised that this is in fact a rudder/post for a Beneteau Cyclades (which is what I reckoned). They have said that the Cyclades and the Oceanis have identical rudders that are interchangeable. "
So if they are identical and interchangeable, how does B know that this is a Cyclades rudder? That would imply the two are in fact not identical, but they are somehow different parts, wouldn't it?

Sometimes it is just easer to blame it on gremlins (they like to eat rudders, especially blue rudders) and hire a shaman to chase them away.

remembering back to my blister research days the cause was attributed to the fact that their was to large a percentage of solvent in the mix at layup. The solvent was then trapped and being hydroscopic aborbed water which caused it to expand causing delamination. If that's what happened here then it poor manufacturing that caused the failure.

[colemj]

Or it may have had something to do with that rock the previous owner fetched up on……….

Mark