lost rudder

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lost rudder

Postby kdisney » Thu Aug 06, 2015 7:09 am

I capsized last weekend in Raritan bay. I was not well prepared. I lost my rudder assembly. Does anyone know of a used one that I can buy? My boat is an O'day Daysailer 1 built in 1972, My e mail address is kdisney@optonline.net
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Re: lost rudder

Postby charlie1939 » Sun Oct 11, 2015 6:28 pm

If you don't have any luck finding an orphan rudder, you can easily make one. Dimensions are at https://www.daysailer.org/Constititution-&-Bylaws, download the "part 3" PDF which has the class rules dimensions of the rudder blade (cheap is a 1" nominal board of the right size or a fancier rudder, use a fiberglassed 1/2" board. The requirements for the rudder head are in Part 3 also; although the detailed design is your call. For the rudder head, I recommend using about 1/16th inch aluminum sheets (need two) for the head with copper tubing spacers and whatever tiller design you want. You can buy pintles that will fit your gudgeons various places, D&R, Cape Cod Boatworks, Ebay, just make sure you have a pin (or a piece of coathanger wire) through a hole in the upper pintle to keep your rudder on the boat when you capsize next time. Happy sailing...
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Re: lost rudder

Postby GreenLake » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:39 am

There's building a rudder blade, the full assembly of blade and rudder head, or everything, including the tiller. Tiller can be made in a number of ways, even adapted from other things like pick-ax handles and what not. I can't speak to that. But I can corroborate that creating a full assembly isn't really all that difficult, and if anything is time consuming at all, it's not the structural parts, but the finishing, that is sanding and painting. In other words, it's like every such project.

The details on my own attempt at rudder building are in the thread Building a rudder. Not the last word on the subject but perhaps a starting point for improvement.

I've used the rudder since then and it continues to work fine. I enjoy the fact that it floats, in fact, it probably adds almost no net weight at the transom, and the foil shape, while not perfect (nor perfectly executed) is a vast improvement over what was there.

In shaping the foil a power plane and a belt sander definitely speeded up the process, but aren't the only option. In cutting apart rudder head and foil, which I built from the same blank, a jigsaw was handy, but a simple coping saw would be another option. That's it for specialized tools, so it really isn't too complex a job.
~ green ~ lake ~ ~
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Re: lost rudder

Postby Signalcharlie » Wed Oct 14, 2015 8:56 pm

Kent and Skipper
1971 DS II #4624 "CYANE"
Small Boat Restoration blog http://smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com/p/o.html
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Re: lost rudder

Postby GreenLake » Thu Oct 15, 2015 2:31 am



From the looks of it, what they offer is the original stock rudder and assembly. Because it has some serious design weaknesses and is unnecessarily heavy I would not encourage anyone to spend money on this - the exception being the tiller, perhaps.

If you are not sailing under class rules there are places that offer well-designed rudder assemblies that would work for a DS, and, that would be my contention, would work better than the stock rudder. For the centerboard there are places selling drop-in replacements with better foil shape for the DS, one of them being the current builder. For the rudder, I haven't looked around, because building my own was a nice challenge. As I found out, the limited cost of materials and the moderate effort required made the project "competitive", and when I count the satisfaction of having designed created something like that on my own, I certainly feel I come out ahead.

That said, I can certainly understand anyone buying a ready-made rudder, only I wouldn't pick the old stock design.
~ green ~ lake ~ ~
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