Wet rudder

[PabloPicasso]

My boat has been up on the hard stand all winter. I noticed today the leading edge of the GRP spade rudder is wet. It seems like the water is oozing out from inside the rudder. The gel coat seems a bit thin on the leading edge too

Any clue as to what has happened and what to do about it?

 

[pelissima]

Simple. Your rudder is full of water. You can pretend you did not notice it and go back to water. Or if you have the time you could bite the bullet, open up (cut) a significant rectangular large enough to extract all the wet foam inside. Once clean in a matter of a few weeks it will be dry enough to rebuild it.

 

[Tranona]

Drill a hole in the bottom and see how much water comes out. Some people do this every year to avoid rebuilding the rudder. Danger is that the tangs welded to the stock can corrode and you suddenly find the tiller turns but the rudder does not.

You need to find out exactly how the rudder is constructed before you decide how to deal with it.

 

[LittleSister]

Drill a hole in the bottom . . .

But not with a mains electric drill!

 

[PabloPicasso]

Drill a hole in the bottom and see how much water comes out. Some people do this every year to avoid rebuilding the rudder. Danger is that the tangs welded to the stock can corrode and you suddenly find the tiller turns but the rudder does not.

You need to find out exactly how the rudder is constructed before you decide how to deal with it.

There's a good site here showing what I need.
http://www.randpsystems.co.uk/seawolf/rudders.htm
Maybe next year. I'll need a crane lift to get the rudder out. Or maybe I could just drop it and do it in situ?

 

[William_H]

Water in a rudder is not neceessarily a disaster. However it can lead to corrosion damage to vital metal parts. The tangs. It may be that water is only in the bottom part so drilling and draining may be OK. So much depends on how diligent you want to be. You might get away with doing nothing or just draining for may years but you may be so concerned as to want to dismantle the rudder and check the metal parts.
How about a crazy alernative , make an emergency transom mounted rudder stowed away in case of loss of main rudder. Just ignore the moistur e in the rudder?
good luck olewill

 

[Tam Lin]

You can drop it and do it in situ. You may have to dig a hole in the ground under the rudder to get enough room to drop it. Worked for me on my Leisure 23 some years ago.

 

[SeaStu1]

You can drop it and do it in situ. You may have to dig a hole in the ground under the rudder to get enough room to drop it. Worked for me on my Leisure 23 some years ago.

Same here. On my Leisure 20 l dug a hole initially before realising that l could use my shoulder to lift her under the stern after the bow prop was removed. I could then lift the boat high enough to extract the rudder and l refitted the rudder the same way, depends on the size of boat and how good your back is!

As already mentioned the tangs can corrode and break, this is what happened with me and before the repair when l had any sort of weather helm it was scary as it was doing very little. The rudder was split apart, the tangs were re-welded and someone who knows what they are doing put new foam in and properly put it back together like new.