Quote:
Originally Posted by ejlindahl
FWIW I daysailed on a ~1995 Catana ~48' that had this problem. The owner made up a tie rod out of tubing so the rudders were always aligned. .... |
My
boat has a large diameter Teleflex cable that ties the rudders together, so no need for a straight line path for a tie bar (good thing too because there is no such path without a chain saw). If they get a bit out of alignment I can feel it in the
steering. This does not happen often. When it does, I can just depressurize the rams (or usually just one, one per rudder) and the Teleflex cable pushes them back into alignment. I visually check them in the
water or hauled each season and tweak if necessary, but usually only once every few years....conveniently about the same frequency I need to do some type of
maintenance anyway.
Another upside to this, or a tie bar, is that one ram could fail and I would still have
steering of both rudders. One ram is plenty strong for steering in most conditions, but 2 gives some redundancy.
Hmmm...that Teleflex cable is 16 years old now...probably should put a preemptive replacement on the
refit list.
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