Today's Lesson

N

Nene

New Member
Well they say you learn something new everyday; so here is today's lesson.
REALLY check to be sure your rudder pin is locked in properly (no hurrying). I went out today and the boat was feeling a bit squirrelly. I tacked and all of a sudden the rudder was loose in my hand. Yikes! I'm so glad it was only blowing 8 with very little in the way of waves. I don't think it would have been much fun, or very easy reattaching it with 17 mph winds and 1.5 foot waves.
 
I was sailing in a Flying Fish many years ago and the tiller snapped off at the rudder. Similar to your experience there wasn't a lot of wind, so it didn't result in a swim. However, it was a challenge to get back home. A few years back I was putting up after a day of relatively rough sailing conditions and found that the gudgeon screws were all loose and the entire rudder assembly was literally falling off. That would have been "entertaining" had it happened earlier.
 
My Porpoise II—with me in it—got a "helpful" launch off a dock. The gudgeon plate, mounted on a mahogany block, took the full force of the drop, and broke off. :(

(So I had tiller, tiller extension, rudder, steel gudgeon-plate, and mahogany-block all in one hand—at once!) :oops:

.
 
Had that happen once, so I let loose the main sheet, not all the way as it was run through a deck mounted swivel cam cleat, laid down towards the stern and reattached the rudder. It took a few minutes and the sail was noisy flapping around, but it worked.
 
Yup, that's what I did; and had nice wet, cold hands for the rest of the sail.

Ordered in some neoprene sailing gloves. Still learning...
 
Similar experience, but with the tiller extension. I sent my 14-yr old son off in our Minifish and I was finishing rigging my Sunfish to join him. It was a small lake, but very breezy that afternoon and he was super excited to sail in the heavy breeze. I noticed him floundering off along the edge of the lake near some trees, and sailed over to see if I could help. The tiller extension (a Ronstan Battlestick with the rubber universal) had detached from the tiller, and he somehow lost the extension over the side of the boat. So now he was drifting and being pushed by the wind towards the trees, so I yelled at him to sail out of there. But he had never really sailed before without the tiller extension and couldn't get the handle on how to tack properly without it so we ended up just sailing back in to shore. And we never did find the tiller extension.
 
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