Friday, October 30, 2009 | Author: Jacob
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...
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1 comments:

On October 31, 2009 at 12:39 PM , Greg Rudzinski said...

J & J

I am now hard at work in the boat yard doing the usual stuff and always there is the unexpected. The surprise came when the lower rudder bearing was removed from the skeg. The four supporting bolts had corroded to the diameter of a needle. So once again a lucky find has saved me from disaster. Hopefully no more surprises ;-)

Greg

P.S. Looks like you have your rudder issue under control. Good work.