Rudder failure

[Critter]

Solar Wind has dropped out of the LongPac. We lost the rudder during the return leg of the OYRA Farallones race Saturday. Beetle Rob suggested that I recount the experience and any lessons learned here on the forum.

How did it happen? Well, we didn’t hit anything. Wind and sea were moderate by Farallones standards. We were reaching under spinnaker with the apparent wind on the beam to slightly aft. So the rudder was loaded up, but not to any extreme. At one point my crew Donald, who was driving, announced that he was having a lot of trouble pulling the tiller up enough to prevent a roundup. I helped him pull on the next one, and we could feel a “soft stop” at about 15 degrees of tiller that could be overcome with considerable effort. At this point the boat would respond to input; it was just very difficult to provide the input. But soon there was almost no response no matter what we did, and it was clear the spinnaker had to come down. The only way to douse was to let the boat round up and haul in from the tack. We made plenty of big rips as we fisted it in. This was Lazarus, my old black-and-white kite that I blew out on the SHTP but which Synthia was able to resurrect. This time we killed him off for good!

We took a shot at steering under main only, but the boat was still almost unresponsive. I snuck a peek over the stern quarter, and I believe I saw the two halves of the blade separating and bent off to the port side. Luckily, the emergency rudder was on board for the LongPac start in four days, and it was clearly time to install it. I’d only done this at the dock, and without the solar panels to get in the way, but it was surprisingly easy while bobbing around at sea and working around the panels. The boat sat patiently in a stable position. I pushed the cassette out through the stern pulpit and, leaning out after it, got it aligned with the gudgeons and pushed the pintles in. Then we brought up the blade (which is quite big, over six feet tall), extended it out over the pulpit and tipped it down until the foil end entered the cassette. Once it was vertical it slid down fairly easily with a couple of hangups. In fact, we never got it down all the way. The upper end stopped about a foot and a half above the cassette, and it was too far outboard to put any weight onto.

Next we hoisted the jib and dropped the main to keep the center of effort forward, and got underway in good control. We did call the Coast Guard to advise them of our situation, but we made it clear we didn’t want assistance. Soon this got a little boring, and we hoisted the main to the second reef, whereupon we were making 5-6 knots comfortably. But approaching the Gate the wind picked up to over 20, and we started rounding up and needing both of us to steer. Not surprising, with only about two feet of rudder in the water. So in another broach and with Pt. Diablo getting close, it was down with the main again. More or less back in control, we crossed under the bridge and finished the race. I found that the tiller was moving freely (by now, the fiberglass and foam had completely fallen away), and so I tied the rudder ropes onto the tiller and we were able to steer almost normally – although there was still a lot of drag in the system.

Lessons learned:

Tether the cassette and blade before moving them outboard of the boat! (I did think of this ahead of time.) And if you don’t have extra pintles, tether them too. Heck, tether yourself.

I was very, very lucky that this race was only four days ahead of the LongPac. If I hadn’t been prepping for that race, the emergency rudder wouldn’t have been on board. I may rethink my normal complement of spares for ocean sailing.

I was also very, very lucky that the rudder broke when it did, rather than surviving another 100 miles. It would have very hard work to bring the boat home from mid-LongPac with the E-rudder in its current state of service.

My E-rudder needs some redesign and rework. There was a lot of drag on the steering ropes, and it was tiring to steer.

I design robots and laboratory devices for a living. I know I need to loosen up the tolerances when building boat parts, but clearly I didn’t make enough of a mental adjustment. Keep that blade loosy-goosy in the cassette, or maybe rig a small tackle to pull it down.

Finally, my rudder was 33 years old, so I shouldn’t be too surprised that it let go. Just recently I was musing “How long is this rudder going to last?” Many of us sail old boats. We should all be thinking about what’s likely to let go, whether we should replace it prophylactically, and/or what we’ll do if it does fail.

To everyone who’s still in the LongPac, sail fast, sail safe, have fun!
Max