It's hot here, and there are clouds of mosquitos, and fire ants that attack, and cows roaming loose outside the boat yard. And, today we found a small, but important, crack in our rudder.Most likely it will be a relative simple fix, however, as all boats owners will understand, getting to a point where we can have enough access to fix the rudder is a huge job in itself.

The crack is in the leading edge of the rudder, through to the shaft, in between the hull and the rudder (with a clearance of ~1/4"). To take it off, we need to remove the tiller head fitting (done), remove the below deck autopilot arm (done), remove the prop, pull the prop shaft, and (drum roll) cut the fiberglass heel fitting off (http://svpisces.blogspot.com/2008/10/boatyard-forensics.html), and then lift or tilt the boat forward to get enough clearance below to pull the rudder off.

Then we need to get the rudder back to the Bay Area so that we can work on it this summer.

Still all in all, we are extremely lucky to have found this crack here and now.