I had my rudder on a
Jeanneau 43DS snap right off at the
hull join while at sea as well. I contacted
Jeanneau directly and it took a bit over 3 weeks to get a rudder to me using expedited
shipping (I was in the
British Virgin Islands, there are worse places to spend time).
I know that sinking feeling when the
wheel suddenly goes loose, the boat turns sharply into the
wind and in my case I could see the rudder bobbing away in the waves so I knew that I was in trouble. At least there was no water ingression but it did take a day before I got a tow; I tried everything short of ripping out an inside door to use as a true star-board side rudder but combination of heavy seas and variable winds and a fin-keel made that a difficult task.
In my case the reason that the rudder broke off at the hull join was not directly possible to determine, but was most likely due to a hairline fracture due to a grounding before I bought the boat, coupled with crevice
corrosion in a position where it could not be easily seen and the boat was kept in an electrically active spot so there might have been a year's worth of
electrolysis to help the chemical and mechanical process along.
If you drop the remaining stock early enough a metallurgist should easily be able to do some forensic
work.
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