I have to admit, I'm quite surprised that even after extensive polling not a single person recommended that I replace the rudder. I mean, even among some seriously big-thinking boat work type people the unanimous opinion was to at most sleeve the inside with some stainless rod. For example, Noah on Scheherazade seemed of the opinion that even sleeving with a solid rod was potentially a waste of time...and this is coming from a guy who is about to move his engine to a new spot halfway across his boat.

Being the type to not be satisfied with unanimity across a broad swath of experienced people, here's the steps we undertook.

1) Drill more holes. Maybe under that next little piece of fiberglass the answer to what to do will become crystal clear. We drilled a (ahem) moderate amount of inspection holes, primarily to ensure that the lower weld where the shaft attaches to the skeleton was not compromised. Everything looked really good and solid, and interestingly, it turns out that the lower pintle of shaft was not in fact continuous with the upper shaft. They were joined via the skeleton plate.

2) Excavate the fiberglass plug in the lower shaft. To keep water out of the lower shaft it had been filled (to a length greater than about 18") with solid epoxy. In order to inspect (or sleeve) the shaft we needed to be able to get most of this out. We spent a whole lot of quality time with big drill bits, drill extensions, and a massive screwdriver-as-chisel.

3) Get a quote on a new one. We called a few places for quotes on a new rudder, and ended up having the pleasure to work a bit with Joel and his whole crew over at IdaSailor Marine. These guys really know their stuff, are friendly and easy to get in touch with, follow-up on what they say they will (!), and generally provide a level of customer service that I have rarely (or never) gotten within a marine industry. We didn't end up buying a rudder through them, but we are getting the heel fitting fabricated (more to come on that topic) by them. I really can't say enough good things about these folks, go buy something from them :)

4) At a certain point we decided that whatever objective sense of reality we had started with had disappeared during the hours spent staring at the damn thing, so we decided to take the rudder to a 'prominent' local boatyard. We borrowed Chips' styling Jeep Comanche (thanks again!) and drove the rudder over to them. The foreman took a look, and pronounced it 'pretty light corrosion' and said that if we put a solid rod in and welded it in place it would be totally fine. He quoted us an upper range price of $150 to put the rod in and weld it in place, including the need to put the rod on the lathe to get the fit right. We went, had a cup of coffee, decided to go for it, brought the rudder back, unloaded it, filled out the paper work, and then...'okay, it'll be a minimum of $200 plus materials.' WTF? Price of steel just go up in the last 30 minutes? He then told us that the materials would cost $5/lb of stainless. When we saw that he was going to use a piece of leftover prop shaft we were done for. The prop shaft would have been fine, but it was ridiculous in our opinion to jack up the price, and on top of it charge us market rate for materials that were probably left over from the last job. We took the rudder and bailed out.
Luckily Chips and Mike had hooked us up with an amazing machinist closer to home. He welded in a solid rod of 316, and also welded up some of the larger pitting on the outer shaft, for less cost than the (original) boatyard quote. He also threw in two stories, one about killing someone's tame pet fish in Mexico, and the other about being swept out to sea off Pt. Bonita.

5) So here we are, rudder is awaiting some fiberglass (to be completed in the next week or so), and a burly heel fitting on order from IdaSailor. We are starting to actually be the smallest bit optimistic that we might not have to languish in the work yard for too long...

That's my wife on a Friday evening after working a full day...her idea to grab the dremel and start in on the rudder...I'm a very lucky guy.

Well, we got off to a strong start with the rudder 'repair'. First stroke of inspiration was to use a commonly available stud-finder with metal mode to non-intrusively map out the inner structure of the rudder skeleton. It turned out that Pisces' rudder had a nice big wing-shaped section of stainless steel attached to the rudder shaft. We confirmed this with one test hole, and also confirmed that the foam was nice and dry inside the rudder. Awesome, a little epoxy and some fiberglass tape and everything should be as good as new.

So, we set up some makeshift saw horses, got the epoxy ready, and...crap...noticed that there was good bit of corrosion on the lower end of the rudder shaft. This is a potentially huge problem, as it can progress quickly (or slowly) and lead to significant weakening of the rudder shaft...which is bad.

Here's a list right now of our thought process. It's helpful for me to just get it written down.

Technical details:
- Shaft is 1 1/2" Nominal Sched 80 304 stainless (wall thickness ~.2")
- Surface corrosion (estimate less than 10% penetration) covers a several square inch area, primarily low on the shaft.
- Deeper corrosion/pitting (estimate less than 25% penetration) in groups, some in the area around where the shaft enters the fiberglass body of the rudder and some more randomly distributed on the exposed shaft.

Thoughts on possible causes:
- Not galvanic corrosion, as this piece is in contact with no other metals.
- I don't think it's stray current corrosion, as I haven't seen any other undue corrosion/problems with paint or anodes.
- Could have been caused during the time period when Pisces sat in Oxnard seeing very little use. At this point the shaft probably sat in one particular orientation for long periods of time without use/water flow.
- Could have been due to improper polishing/prep of the shaft by builder.

Thoughts on Outcome:
Really everything falls in one of two categories, fix or replace. Fixing is very tempting as the rudder is extremely well built in every other way, and fixing would also be the simplest and cheapest thing to do. On the other hand, if the shaft breaks we are in some real serious trouble. Here are some random thoughts/brainstorm ideas on the fix/replace options:

Fix
- As shaft is hollow, could insert solid stainless rod inside that would fit snugly and extend up past the end of the area affected by corrosion. This would perhaps give a bit of extra strength in addition to the shaft wall.
- Looking into epoxy/ceramic materials such as Belzona. These apparently are used by the Navy and merchant ships to resurface/repair shafts as well as to inhibit future corrosion. This is probably also pretty expensive for what it is.
- We still need to get a lower gudgeon/rudder shoe fitting made. It's possible that we could somehow find an option that kills two birds with one piece of bronze. For instance, we could potentially move to a more traditional gudgeon/pintle set by strapping the pintle onto the rudder, thereby removing load from that section of the shaft. Or, we could cut off most/all of the corroded shaft, insert a pin up into the remaining good shaft, and use this as the pintle.
- Could do some combination of the above, most likely would be Belzona or similar coating combined with internal shaft for extra strength.
- Seems also possible to me that since we will have a new gudgeon with the ability to add a sacrificial zinc, that it's not unreasonable to think that the corrosion would be significantly slowed/stopped from here on forward. (or am I just engaging in some seriously wishful thinking?)

Replace
- We got a couple quotes from rudder manufacturers, and it's not outlandishly expensive to get a new one built...I mean don't get me wrong, it's not cheap, but it wouldn't break the bank right now. We don't have the time to do it ourselves, at this point it's all we can do to get up in the morning, go to work, etc. We want to get through with what we have to do, and then get back out cruising.
- Plus of a new rudder is that it's new, no corrosion.
- One downside is that I don't think a new rudder would be built as well overall, for instance the metal skeleton inside would be substantially smaller, and the glass would be much thinner.
- Also, a bit of a logistical problem as we have to ship the thing across the country, then have them ship the other one back to somewhere depending on how long it takes (Tucson?). Also, although the manufacturers seemed to think they could get it done quickly, this is definitely the option most likely to cause delays in our cruising plans.
- If we are going to go through with the trouble of doing a whole rebuild, I'd like to take the opportunity to significantly improve some pieces of the rudder. For example having a solid shaft would open up some superior tiller attachment options, etc. Problem is I get quickly bogged down in trying to deal with these new options, and suddenly the job is even bigger than 'just' getting a new rudder built.


Alright, that's my current pain. Take a look at some photos (click to enlarge), and tell me what I should do :)

A while back I promised to write a post on gear, what worked and what didn't work in our first season cruising. Well, that idea got lost in the shuffle as we quickly fell back into work and other 'real-life' type responsibilities. Now though we are starting to get ready to head back to Pisces, and as part of that preparation we are buying a whole bunch of fun new stuff. So, rather than talk about all the gear on Pisces that worked well, I thought I'd talk a little bit about a brief selection of gear that we are excited about replacing or adding for this second season of cruising.

Anchors!
I am currently deep in anchor obsession mode (ask Julia). Last season we used a 45lb CQR and a 45lb Bruce, with 300 ft of 5/16" High-Test Chain. The setup worked great, and we never dragged, really it's plenty big for our boat.

But here's what I'm thinking...if a 45lb anchor works great...then a 60lb anchor would work greater! I talked to a guy the other day with a 60lb anchor on a 37' boat who called it his '60lb sleeping pill.'

I am pining for a 55lb Rocna anchor. These anchors have have been getting consistently great reviews...and it's bigger! We would most likely sell our 45lb CQR and keep the Bruce as a secondary anchor.

There are a couple complications to this lovely plan, not the least of which is that our current windlass (a vertical style older Lewmar Ocean) is pretty much maxed out with the current ground tackle, and has some major problems such as no manual mode. If the purchase of a new anchor also necessitates the purchase of a new windlass, things get very pricey very quickly. When we left Pisces in June we wrote ourselves a note along the lines of "No matter what, buy a new windlass, don't try to back out, do it!!" Now that we've spent a little time looking at the prices of windlasses we are seriously considering creative ways to justify backing out of purchasing a new one.

On a more technical note, I've learned some interesting things about the load ratings of various pieces of the anchoring system that might prove helpful to someone else.
- BBB Chain has a Working Load Limit (WLL) of 1/4 of its Breaking Load Limit (BLL).
- High-Test Chain (Grade 43) in the U.S. has a WLL of 1/3 of its BLL.
- Shackles generally have a WLL of 1/6 of their BLL.

So, in order to compare the pieces of the anchoring system you need to do a bit of normalizing. For instance, our 5/16" HT chain has a WLL of 3900 lbs, and therefore a BLL of 11,700lbs. Our shackles (3/8") have a WLL of 2000lbs, however they have a 6-1 safety factor and therefore a BLL of 12,000lbs. On the other hand 3/8" Proof Coil chain has a WLL of 2,650lbs and therefore a BLL of 10,600 lbs.

However, please go verify the above for yourself, and let me know if you find a flaw in my numbers! (Also, if the above isn't geeky enough for you then check out: http://alain.fraysse.free.fr/sail/rode/rode.htm for an in-depth discussion of anchoring physics)

Boat Cards!
Okay, so now that I've driven almost everyone to give up on reading this post...we are making boat cards so that we can more easily exchange info with the variety of people we meet along the way. As it was, we ended up writing our information on the backs of other people's cards (particularly Tao's cards) and feeling like everyone was way more organized than we were. We're using VistaPrint for our cards.

Outboard Engine!
Having a hard dinghy is awesome, and rowing is awesome too. Probably 90% of the time it was totally fine, but there were some instances where, due to wind/chop or sheer distance, rowing was enough of a pain to keep us boat bound. Yesterday we bought an awesome little used Mercury 2.5hp. We're hoping that this will expand our dinghy horizons a bit, without meaning that we get too lazy about rowing.

Fancy Jib Halyard!
Pisces is rigged almost exclusively with Sta-Set line that, while being durable and reasonably priced, can be a bit stretchy. This has been particularly problematic on our jib halyard. As the wind picks up we have been making frequent trips to the mast to tighten up the halyard and keep the jib shape looking good. We're going to swap the current halyard out with something fancy like T900, and hopefully we won't have to adjust the halyard tension every time the wind kicks up another 5 knots.