Having had the same experience as Mark some time ago, I feel his pain.
Perhaps one of the creative engineers out there can come up with a solution.
A few auto makers have a "shear pin" in their steering columns. If you brake
and hit the steering wheel hard, the steering column collapses. Perhaps we
could have something which is designed to fail under excessive loads, but
can be re-set on the water, such as a plastic gudgeon pin or similar.....
Roger
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From: Mark White [mailto:mwhite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 7:09 AM
To: swiftsolo@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: rudder blues
To all,
I made the mistake of misjudging the wind speed yesterday. I left the shore
where it was fairly well protected from the wind, thinking the wind was
blowing around 20. I knew it was in deep dodo as soon as I hit the wind
about 200 yds off shore. The wind was not steady, it was like rolling, or
twisting constantly. My heading was constantly shifting 20 degrees or so,
just trying to maintain a straight course. The battens kept popping from
left to right, while I bounced in and out of the water. The only thing I
could think to do was to bear off, run down wind, gibe, and come back to my
starting point on the beach. I tried 3 or 4 times to bear off but the boat
refused to do so. Every time I tried, the bow went down to the gunwale and
would start to heel over. The last attempt I tried as fast as possible.
The boat heeled, and I heard a breaking sound, like wood tearing. I thought
I had broken the transom, or the transom bar. After capsizing I couldn't
find any damage. Luckily someone was there and helped me get the mail down
while capsized. Thinking all was well, I started heading for shore under
the jib, and noticed the boat steered very sloppy, that was when I noticed
what broke. The rudder was kicked off to starboard. It lasted about 3/4 of
a minute, and broke off behind the boat. Needless to say the boat without a
rudder just spins in circles. The ride out lasted about 1 minute, the tow
back in lasted about 20 minutes. I had left my wind gauge at home and the
one at the marina was broken, but the folks that run the place thought the
wind was blowing 35 gusting to 40, I didn't think it was that high, but I
really don't know.
So it appears that the rudder was the weak link. I still can't imagine the
rudder could have had enough pressure on it to break. The question is do
you make the rudder stronger, then possibly breaking the next weaker link,
or let the rudder be the weak link? Obviously the best solution is to stay
on the shore on days like this, but you can still be caught in big wind
while out on the water. I think now it would be a good idea to have a hand
held VHF in my PDF. If I had been farther out, or out of sight of the
marina and this had happened, and no one right there to assist, it would
have been ugly. I believe I would have been ok, but the boat would have
eventually wound up on the rocks. I now have a new found respect for the
wind, and the need for a new rudder blank.
I'm not sure what else I could have done, but it would be good to know what
to do if found in this situation in the future. In hind sight, I think I
could have tacked, and maybe tried to stall the boat and drift back to
shore, but if it wouldn't stall, and drift, I would have headed towards the
floating piers. I just knew I didn't want to get any further away from
shore. I don't think I could have gotten the main down and kept the boat
up-right. In a one man boat the options seem limited.
I think this is something that should be discussed, here or on the website,
since anyone could end up in a situation similar to this.
Mark
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