Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I guess I'm on a roll today documenting boat projects. I ended up deciding to replace the rudder, and set forth below are the details of how that worked out. This all took place in the winter/spring of 2011 and is largely a re-post of material from the S&S34 association website ...
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Thought I would provide an update on this project. After getting the rudder off and doing some inspection, I determined that the rudder was full of water and in fact was constructed in such a way that the entire top of the rudder was not glassed over, just filled with some sort of filler material. This presented the possibility that the integrity of the rudder was compromised due to crevice corrosion. This is obviously a personal choice, but for me I just couldn't get comfortable with the idea of just drilling holes in the rudder and trying to dry it out, without cutting it open to see what was really going on. While most of my sailing is local day sailing in protected waters, I'd like to do the Bermuda race, etc. And once you get to cutting it open, a new blade is likely in order.
So the good folks at S&S hooked me up with a shop in Massachusetts by the name of CSI Composites (
http://www.csi-composites.com/) that does a lot of high end, high tech glass work -- e.g., they did all the foils on Puma Ocean Racing's Volvo 70. Jeff Kent, the founder of the business, has been just great to deal with. I dropped the old rudder off and after some discussion it was decided that the old piece of the skeg I had already cut off was not ever intended to be structural, and if I wanted to change the rudder shoe so it wrapped around the outside of the skeg it probably made more sense for Jeff to also re-build the lower part of the skeg. So out came the saw again, and I chopped off another six inches or so of the skeg and sent it to Jeff. He then fabricated a new lower skeg that will be glassed into the existing skeg stump (the new piece has skins that will slide up onto the stump after I grind the stump a bit -- sort of like putting a crown on a tooth), and also fabricated a new rudder. We were able to re-use the original rudder post, so that saved a chunk of cash. In the meantime, Jeff was also able to extend the depth of the rudder by about two inches and reshape it slightly. He sent me some pics today of the state of play on the new rudder. A new rudder shoe and a new middle bearing will also be installed as part of the process. Here are some pics:
Existing skeg stump:
New lower skeg:
New rudder:
I took delivery of the new rudder and skeg in May and set about installing it. This ended up being a pretty big and dirty job, as I had to grind away a significant amount of the skeg stub in order to fit the new skeg on to it. Here you can see the new skeg glued in place with the rudder temporarily installed so that I can align everything properly:
After the skeg was in place, it was strengthened with several layers of carbon fiber, followed by fiberglass and some filler. Here you can see the progression:
After the skeg was installed, I installed the rudder using the nifty new rudder shoe that Jeff Kent at CSI Composites designed and had fabricated. Here is the shoe:
And here is the final product, ready for bottom paint:
The installation included new bearings in the rudder shoe and at the through hull point. I also cleaned up the bearing in the cockpit. The new rudder/skeg combination is about 2 inches deeper than the original. Not only is the new rudder much smoother in its operation, it also resolved a previous problem (apparently due to the worn rudder bearings) whereby the boat would pull hard to starboard under power. She now tracks nicely. All in all, this was a big and expensive job, but it gives me peace of mind to know the new rudder is completely solid.