Which sub 37 ft yacht to cross the North Atlantic in?

[TernVI]

The advantage of a full skeg is it places an additional bearing at the end of the rudder. This reduces the load on the bearings as it shares the load across more bearings. In a direct impact the skeg provides protection to the rudder. A spade rudder has no protection and can be bent backward at the bearing if the rudder uses a s/s shaft. If the rudder uses a grp shaft it can be sheared off in an impact. An impact at the very tip of a spade rudder can exert huge force on the shaft as you have a turning moment around the lower bearing. The same impact at the tip of a full skeg would have far less impact.
....

That's just arm-waving I'm afraid, unless you can back it up with structural analysis.
A skeg can be very weak if it's only a bit of GRP.

There is a tendency to compare vague concepts of the bullet proof ocean going yacht, with value-for-money mass produced AWBs.
The result is a few people buying yachts which are a pastiche of old designs.

 

[dulls]

That's just arm-waving I'm afraid, unless you can back it up with structural analysis.
A skeg can be very weak if it's only a bit of GRP.

There is a tendency to compare vague concepts of the bullet proof ocean going yacht, with value-for-money mass produced AWBs.
The result is a few people buying yachts which are a pastiche of old designs.

A full keel with rudder is far less prone to impact damage than a spade but in real terms you could cross the Atlantic very safely in either with out losing sleep.
You could argue that by having a spade rudder you have more manoeuvrability and could dodge some object in the water more effectively. Both are safe at sea.

 

[geem]

That's just arm-waving I'm afraid, unless you can back it up with structural analysis.
A skeg can be very weak if it's only a bit of GRP.

There is a tendency to compare vague concepts of the bullet proof ocean going yacht, with value-for-money mass produced AWBs.
The result is a few people buying yachts which are a pastiche of old designs.

Read Morning Clouds assessment of rudder failure on their boat and why they no longer ocean cruise with a spade rudder. No doubt that production boats are value for money. They get you afloat for less cash. The builders have worked out how to make something look good. Dont expect it to be full of superb engineering.
To say a skeg is only a bit of grp is fine as long as you appreciate it is the stuff your boat is built from! Its still a bit of grp in front of a skeg hung rudder that provides protection to an otherwise vulnerable bit of grp suspened at one end by a plastic bearing in the case of modern production boats.
My own skeg hung rudder has three phosphor bronze bushes. The shaft is 100mm diameter 316 s/m at the middle bearing. The main bush has a greaser. The skeg is a considerable construction full length of the rudder. Its not as efficient as a spade but its stronger by a large margin.
If you can find the time to read Morgan Clouds article on spade rudders you will see that spade rudders need considerably more maintenance than a skeg hung rudder with more frequent bearing changes and rudder removal.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

can you link their structural analysis or are they bloggers rather than engineers?

 

[Zing]

can you link their structural analysis or are they bloggers rather than engineers?

Think of a mast. It will stand up with just the support of the deck and hull, but will be orders of magnitude stronger with a thin wire backstay and forestay. The engineering maths on this is not terribly hard.

 

[dom]

Read Morning Clouds assessment of rudder failure on their boat and why they no longer ocean cruise with a spade rudder. No doubt that production boats are value for money. They get you afloat for less cash. The builders have worked out how to make something look good. Dont expect it to be full of superb engineering.

........

"Value for money" boats like the Hallberg Rassy 64
Hallberg-Rassy 64

The fact is not everyone wants to sail old 1970s boats and - shock and horror ? - modern designers and material makers know their trades just as well as their forefathers. Time moves on.

 

[Zing]

"Value for money" boats like the Hallberg Rassy 64
Hallberg-Rassy 64

The fact is not everyone wants to sail old 1970s boats and - shock and horror ? - modern designers and material makers know their trades just as well as their forefathers. Time moves on.

An old design. Time has moved on again. All new HRs designs and Oysters and Swans are twin rudder. Spades, so to compensate for the breakage risk there is a spare. The twins also work better than one. This is what I would choose.

 

[dom]

An old design. Time has moved on again. All new HRs designs and Oysters and Swans are twin rudder. Spades, so to compensate for the breakage risk there is a spare. The twins also work better than one. This is what I would choose.

Exactly, like their new 57. A trend which Hallberg Rassy took straight out of the production boat playbook where dozens of twin rudder boats are available with no skegs and which are much faster than their forefathers

 

[john_morris_uk]

Our spade rudder is a solid stainless plate surrounded by a GRP shaped rudder mounted on a solid 30mm stainless shaft. I appreciate that it might not be quite as strong as a rudder mounted on a skeg, but I'm fairly confident of its strength...

As others have said, one advantage of a spade rudder is that it can be balanced. It's possible to have a short skeg and a bit of rudder forward to try and balance it, but it's never going to be as effective as a balanced spade.

Anyway, we have a Hydrovane which can add as a spare rudder in its own right.

In all these things, you pay your money and make your choice. I'm not convinced by the hard over attitude of the OP's friend. He seems to have been influenced more by some of the stories abounding about the horrors of fin keels and spade rudders. Sorry, but I've sailed all sorts of boats including long keels and long fin keels and racing thin fins etc and I know I wouldn't choose a radical racing design to cross an ocean short handed, but I also wouldn't dismiss all fin keeled boats. Some of the longer fin and well shaped hulls sail beautifully and are just as comfortable at sea as some long keeled boats. The advantage is that they're often faster at sea and certainly much easier to manoeuvre in close quarters.

 

[doris]

Experience, mileage, peace of mind, cheaper insurance perhaps? To not even do a Sea survival course seems madness!

I've done 3 or 4 Sea Survival courses, I forget just how many, for ORC certs in Cat 2 offshore racing. Every time I thought back to the thousands of miles I did before the first one with absolutely no idea of how to use a life raft. This is the one course above all that any offshore sailor should do.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

Think of a mast. It will stand up with just the support of the deck and hull, but will be orders of magnitude stronger with a thin wire backstay and forestay. The engineering maths on this is not terribly hard.

plenty of unstayed masts about. I know the maths, I'm an engineer not a blogger.

 

[[178529]]

I would suggest a contessa 32 or Sandler 32 and spend the remainder on new rigging, sails, electronics, wind vane, etc etc

 

[geem]

"Value for money" boats like the Hallberg Rassy 64
Hallberg-Rassy 64

The fact is not everyone wants to sail old 1970s boats and - shock and horror ? - modern designers and material makers know their trades just as well as their forefathers. Time moves on.

Have you read Morning Clouds article?
Spade Rudders—Ready for Sea?

 

[dulls]

can you link their structural analysis or are they bloggers rather than engineers?

You dont have to be an engineer to know that a keel hung rudder is less prone to failure than a spade but as i have said before a spade might help you dodge something better but either way both boats might have the same issue of damage forward from hitting the same object that went on to damage the rudder. We could go onto argue that a yacht with a spade rudder was going faster at the time so more damage or we could argue a faster yacht can also have a chance to move to a safer position in a low because of its speed. You gain somewhere and you lose somewhere else. Thousands of boats cross big oceans successfully and i expect the the chances for both types would statistically be virtually unmeasurable. I have not looked up anything to support my view by the way.

 

[doris]

I would suggest a contessa 32 or Sandler 32 and spend the remainder on new rigging, sails, electronics, wind vane, etc etc

One would need to be quite young to cross an ocean in one of these 'cos it will take you half a lifetime, they're soooo slow!

 

[dom]

Have you read Morning Clouds article?
Spade Rudders—Ready for Sea?

The article extols the virtue of carbon construction which many production companies have embraced by making the process cost effective. It also points to the need of expensive self-aligning bearings to accommodate large rudders - true - and the need to regularly maintain them, also true, the maintenance point being relevant to all.

Incidentally, why do you keep issuing chilling warnings like, "Read Morning Clouds assessment of rudder failure on their boat and why they no longer ocean cruise with a spade rudder."?

Where does it say that in your attached article, which opens:

"Despite the fact that I had up until that time owned three yachts that had spade rudders, had covered tens of thousands of miles aboard them, and but for a bad case of metal fatigue might never have had a concern about their use, my immediate reaction was to rule out having one on our next boat.​

​

"But I learned a lot at the time as we fabricated a new rudder from scratch; not least in terms of how difficult—and expensive—it can be to do it right.​

Before going on to conclude:

"Whilst I still prefer the strength and security that a skeg offers, I accept that a properly designed and constructed spade rudder can be a viable choice, but it must have some form of protection ahead of it in the form of a keel or prop skeg to reduce the risk of collision damage. One of the reasons I am not a fan of twin rudders is that this is virtually impossible to achieve with this configuration. "​

​

Which as I mentioned above is exactly the direction Hallberg Rassy is going, but that's another story !!

 

[GHA]

Another piece from some very experienced world girdlers

http://bermudarace.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/3-Emergency-Steering-Solutions-v2-.pdf

Sailors preparing to embrace long-distance sailing occasionally ask us what our most important piece of equipment has been. I think they expect to hear us say something like refrigeration or a watermaker, neither of which we carry. Instead, I tell them we consider the steer-ing system our most vital gear. The sails and rig come second, and the anchor and windlass third. The GPS and good charts are fourth. Most of those poised to head off spend a good deal of time and do a more than adequate job preparing the second, third, and fourth items. But many take the rudder/steering system for granted, giving it almost no attention.The best way to avoid rudder failure at sea is to spend some refit dollars on a new rudder and bearings, even if it means giving up some creature com-forts. It’s possible to build a virtually failure-proof rudder for less than the cost of many watermakers. We did this for Hawk, our aluminum Van de Stadt Samoa 47. We were delighted that we’d done so after we spent an hour bouncing the rudder off some rocks in a remote anchorage in Iceland. In the next harbor, a diver checked the rudder for us. His report? He said he suspected that we might’ve broken some rocks, but the rudder looked fine.

Personally a spade rudder & unprotected propeller is too much of a worry, just waiting to snag just on one the countless floating messes of poly rope & nets drifting round the oceans which you will extremely likely go straight over without even knowing it on a dark night...then you're in danger, know more than one sailor has had to go over the side with a kitchen knife, very dodgy in big ocean swells..

 

[Bajansailor]

One would need to be quite young to cross an ocean in one of these 'cos it will take you half a lifetime, they're soooo slow!

Surely 'slow' is relative?

Slow yes, compared to a bigger boat, but I would have thought that both of these yachts (Contessa 32 and Sadler 32) would be able to 'hold their own' against most other cruising yachts of similar size?

I met a chap here some years ago on his Contessa 32 - he had just completed a singlehanded crossing from the Cabo Verde islands to Barbados (approx 2,100 nm) in 14 days, which is an average of 150 miles a day, or approx 6 knots, which is pretty good going really.

 

[capnsensible]

It's a great feeling to be free of time, doesn't happen very often!

First time in our Moody 33 took 16 days from Verdes to Barbados. Second took 26 days from Verdes to Antigua. It didn't matter! ???

 

[Baggywrinkle]

Spade rudder?