Jenneau Rudder Shaft - Failure at Sea

I know I am cynical, but several things come to mind:

  1. Did they not plan for such an eventuality, if not why not;
  2. Can they not sail without a rudder, if not why not;
  3. There sounds to be a lot of engine noise; and
  4. All sounds a bit over egged on the video I could not watch it until the end but did they appeal for cash or point people at their patron site?
 
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mainsail1 said:
Oh yes, the begging bowl was out. In fact, they threatened to stop having fun if punters did not dig deeper into their pockets.
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Note to self: when I head off on my travels set up a patron account and plead for money as I get rained on and eaten alive by midges in Scotland! Stub my toe in the Bay of Biscay and horror of horrors running out of Highland Park, other whiskies are available, midway to the Azores.
 
I have always thought that spade rudders look a bit vulnerable.
When I changed my boat, with longer trips in mind, two of the must haves were encapsulated keel and skeg hung rudder, not through knowledge, but just gut feeling that that was a strong and solid arrangement.
 
LadyInBed said:
I have always thought that spade rudders look a bit vulnerable.
When I changed my boat, with longer trips in mind, two of the must haves were encapsulated keel and skeg hung rudder, not through knowledge, but just gut feeling that that was a strong and solid arrangement.
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Kelpie said:
There's been a bit of discussion for and against spade rudders on the forum before.
Incidents like this one strengthen my own feeling that I don't want one.
But there is the argument that a weak skeg is actually putting your boat at more risk than a spade- if you hit something, you could tear a hole in the bottom of the hull as the skeg breaks off.

Or you could copy what Noelex did building his Bestavaer, and use a spade rudder with a 130mm rudder stock.
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I dont like spade rudders. Our skeg hung rudder has a solid stainless rudder shaft that is 100mm diameter at the main bearing. It tapers in diameter up to the top bearing at deck level and it also tapers from the middle bearing down through the rudder to the bottom bearing on the skeg. The whole rudder shaft is 12ft long with three bearing support. All bearings are bronze. This is a 44ft boat designed for long distance sailing. The rudder is 5’6” long. The skeg is half the size of the rudder. Its times like this that we are very glad we dont have a spade rudder.
 
Spade rudder design is IMHO a very bad idea for am ocean going boat.

My main rudder has a fill length skeg supporting the rudder.

I have designed an auxiliary rudder for my monitor self steering and have included a shear pin hinge on both the auxiliary rudder and the pendulum water vane.

This means if any thing hits the auxiliary rudder or water vane the sear pin will brake and the rudder/vane will kick up and not be lost.

Trial fit of aux rudder
35696693420_ff8f66d169_b.jpg


Hinge details
36086407205_1b05859326_b.jpg
 
One good reason to like my twin rudder setup. I'd like to think i'd probably only lose one due to failure and give me half a chance of getting home.
 
Rogershaw said:
Spade rudder design is IMHO a very bad idea for am ocean going boat.
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:encouragement:
Very fond of my big transom hung tiller rudder with big pintles way offshore where's there's a worrying amount of rubbish to run over. Lots of keel to hit first :)

ISTR Evans & Beth Starzinger on their 2nd boat, Hawke, had a 'you can't bend it' extra strong spade rudder built. Interesting short piece about what sort of a boat a couple of very experienced global sailors went for -

http://metalboatsurveyor.blogspot.com/2014/05/interview-with-beth-leonard-and-evans.html
 
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greeny said:
One good reason to like my twin rudder setup. I'd like to think i'd probably only lose one due to failure and give me half a chance of getting home.
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I spent a long time researching this subject. A body of opinion does not like twin rudder set-ups, because they are not protected by a keel.

Perusing boat builder web sites yields a vast amount of fact and opinion. For someone like me with no design expertise, it came down to accepting that "stuff" happens, so find ways to deal with it.
 
vyv_cox said:
Very little doubt in my mind that this is a fatigue fracture. The underwater shots were so brief that I could not see the initiator. I have seen serious pitting of the rudder stock in a very similar boat from the same manufacturer and this would certainly increase the stress locally. I was also not sure that I could see a change of section at the fracture, another potential cause. A good reason not to have a spade rudder.
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Not having a spade rudder is obvious but a young couple are unlikely to have the budget for a R42 or a Hallberg Rassey. They have learned a hard lesson and as other have pointed out having some self steering gear would have provided redundancy. I think that by posting this video they will have helped a lot of other people decide to fit self steering gear who might otherwise be in umming and arhing about it. Being young they are not as wise as crusty old sailors, they made a commendable effort in-spite of not running the tow around the mast.
 
mainsail1 said:
Oh yes, the begging bowl was out. In fact, they threatened to stop having fun if punters did not dig deeper into their pockets.
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Mean spirited of you.
It will irritate the hell out of you to know that many of their supporters have dug deep and generously swelled their funds.
Of course they do not have to rely on British viewers to chip in as Dylan Winter would testify they are probably the most reluctant to do so
 
Sandy said:
Note to self: when I head off on my travels set up a patron account and plead for money as I get rained on and eaten alive by midges in Scotland! Stub my toe in the Bay of Biscay and horror of horrors running out of Highland Park, other whiskies are available, midway to the Azores.
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Cynical and mean spirited.
 
I think John Goode had a series in PBO where alternative rudders were used.

I liked the idea of a backed storm jib, forward of the mast in addition to the other two sails set as normal. With three sails to make adjustments, and dependent on where you wanted to go, some control of the situation was possible.
 
It would also be interesting to test emergency tillers on wheel steering systems. We had a cable system fail on a Sweden 38 (1995ish) and the emergency tiller only lasted a few hours, it just wasn't strong enough.
 
Neil_Y said:
It would also be interesting to test emergency tillers on wheel steering systems. We had a cable system fail on a Sweden 38 (1995ish) and the emergency tiller only lasted a few hours, it just wasn't strong enough.
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We have only tried ours when motoring and once when light wind sailing and it was fine for the 15 minutes but how it would be for hours I don't know. All seems pretty robust steel but uncomfortable to use. We would rely on the autopilot I think until the final bit of close quarter manouvering under engine.

So as long as there is a rudder fine. As the thread above has shown there is very little real world testing of self steering separate rudders on boats where they have actually lost the huge balancing effect of the main rudder - except in dead calm. Better than nothing possibly, though.
 
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