My take on the rudder issue

Posted By: MarkW
Date: 6/24/08 8:30a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: Roundup problems w/ Idasailor rudder (Eric J Mac 26D)

Weather helm has at least a couple of different causes. One is the balance of the rig (relative positions of the CE and CLR). That will be affected by mast rake, sail shape, jib size, main sail reefing, and CB position. However, weather helm is also caused by heeling -- by the asymmetrical shape of the hull at the water plane as the boat heels over. None of the above balance factors affect this cause of weather helm. The second year we had the boat, I built a replacement rudder out of white oak. It's balanced and also a couple of inches deeper than stock and 3/4 wider (just because that's the size of the blank that came from the lumber yard mill shop). It also has a better NACA foil shape than stock. If anybody's interested, there's a post somewhere back in the archives about using a table saw to rough out a NACA foil shape. The rudder's still going strong after about 10 years, and I'm pretty sure that it's at least as strong as the rudder bracket. It's very effective in reducing the forces on the tiller and is very resistant to stalling. Not that it's a good idea to do so, but we can now sail the boat on her ear without rounding up. This is especially useful in gusty conditions and when my wife is at the tiller -- no roundup and the tiller forces remain manageable, so she can hold the tiller with one hand and ease the main with the other. With the stock rudder, the forces were high enough that she could do one or the other, but not both. We'd round up in a gust not so much because the rudder stalled out but because my wife's tiller arm stalled out Based on reports of IDA rudders snapping off, I wouldn't be a bit reluctant to buy one if I weren't able to make a new one myself. But if I did have an IDA rudder, I'd carry the stock rudder as a spare in one of the rear bins.