jamie N
Well-Known Member
Last winter I removed my Folkboat's rudder for maintenance/painting. The rudder was mounted on 3 pintles, with gravity doing a lot of the work in keeping it attached, but with a couple of 'R' clips and washers giving security against it 'popping' off. OK, so when it came time to remount the rudder, I wasn't able to find the clips, so fitted a split pin instead; "Should be OK", and moved on.
Last week, I came back onto the mooring with about a 1/2 metre chop on the water; a really nasty, short and mean chop. I moored up, took the rubber tender from the mooring line to the stern of the boat, and set about putting the sail covers on, and putting the boat to bed. That done, look around the cockpit, and see what's to be tidied up, and 'notice' that the tiller looks 'odd'; it was 'wandering about'!
What'd happened was that the rubber boat had snatched on it's line in the chop, and pulled itself into the rudder, and with the boats going in different directions, had broken the split pin, and lifted the rudder off of its mountings!
That's a bad thing!
After the initial WTF, I dragged the 50kgs (or so) of rudder into the cockpit, and secured it there, until the chop had gone.
Remounting the rudder a few days later wasn't too bad, as in water the weight was just a few kgs, and with the rudder suspended from the backstay, it was relatively easy to align, and refit.
I told a chum of mine this tale, he being in the Helicopter engineering world for over 50 years, and his response was that when an engineer of his would use the phrase "Should be OK?", he'd check it! He didn't like people using "Should" about helicopter bits.
I've learnt a bit of a lesson with that, and got away with it.
Last week, I came back onto the mooring with about a 1/2 metre chop on the water; a really nasty, short and mean chop. I moored up, took the rubber tender from the mooring line to the stern of the boat, and set about putting the sail covers on, and putting the boat to bed. That done, look around the cockpit, and see what's to be tidied up, and 'notice' that the tiller looks 'odd'; it was 'wandering about'!
What'd happened was that the rubber boat had snatched on it's line in the chop, and pulled itself into the rudder, and with the boats going in different directions, had broken the split pin, and lifted the rudder off of its mountings!
That's a bad thing!
After the initial WTF, I dragged the 50kgs (or so) of rudder into the cockpit, and secured it there, until the chop had gone.
Remounting the rudder a few days later wasn't too bad, as in water the weight was just a few kgs, and with the rudder suspended from the backstay, it was relatively easy to align, and refit.
I told a chum of mine this tale, he being in the Helicopter engineering world for over 50 years, and his response was that when an engineer of his would use the phrase "Should be OK?", he'd check it! He didn't like people using "Should" about helicopter bits.
I've learnt a bit of a lesson with that, and got away with it.
