Practical Boat Owner - January 2016

Making a jury rudder

in the well, unlocked the steering clamp and tried steering with the engine – but still to no avail. At this point I was really worried and also feeling responsible for
my friend, who was quite unconcerned and showing a touching (but unjustified) confidence in me. Finally I resorted to the VHF, and the good folks from the
RNLI saved the day.no time to tow us back to the strait. We have never gone so fast. It was more like The big lifeboat arrived from Moelfre in
waterskiing, with a huge bow wave flying over the cockpit. They asked if we minded being dropped off at Beaumaris instead of Menai Bridge so they could be back on
station sooner: we were most grateful and happy with this, so they helped us to pick up a buoy there before roaring off, as we had elected to stay on board to see what
else could be done.rather ashamed at having called out the lifeboat. We hadn’t been in imminent Once we were securely on the buoy, I felt
danger with the wind offshore, and we could perhaps have anchored, tried to ride out the weather and attempted to rig a jury rudder. But I was soon very glad I
had called for help: after a cup of tea, I went on deck with my anemometer to find the wind was now Force 7, gusting 8, and it was very uncomfortable even on the
mooring. There was no way we could have limped home in those conditions. After an unpleasant night during which I

had plenty of time to think, I came up with plan C (or was it D? I had lost count). We still had no rudder, and had to get back to our drying mooring at Menai Bridge.

Many years before I had made headboards which slotted into the bunks to prevent collisions between the heads and feet of sleepers lying in line on each side of the

cabin. I had decided that they should have a dual function, and drilled a number of holes in them to allow them to be lashed to a pole to make a sweep or jury rudder...

I was able to hang overboard, release the problem shackle and recover the broken blade. Now it could be examined, the By morning the wind had died down and

sheared edge resembled a broken digestive biscuit, with a mass of crystals suggesting metal fatigue. I have since been told that aluminium, unlike steel, does not have a

lower stress level below which fatigue does

‘The sheared edge resembled a broken digestive biscuit, with crystals suggesting metal fatigue’

The other headboard was lashed to the spinnaker pole to make a steering sweep

The broken rudder Tony fashioned a jury rudder from one of the bunk headboards he had previously madenot occur. In other words, even tiny stress reversals in sufficient number can weaken
it. It makes me wonder if aluminium or its alloys should ever be used in this application? We removed the other broken piece from the rudder stock and wedged in
and bolted one of the headboards to make a small rudder compared with the real one. We shipped this and lashed the other headboard to the spinnaker pole to make
a steering sweep in case the tiny rudder proved ineffective. Back to the drawing board
During the night, I had come to the conclusion that steering with the outboard the previous day may have failed because of the keel: small motorboats without a
deep keel steer quite well with relatively small rudders or just a swivelling outboard. To test this theory we wound up the Seal’s drop keel before setting
off under power alone – with steering outboard, tiny rudder and emergency sweep. We dropped the mooring and opened up the throttle. I thought the
small rudder ought to work better at higher water speed, and it seemed to do so. We never needed the sweep. With the keel up she steered quite well,
although she needed larger angles of incidence to turn. We had an uneventful trip back to the bridge and a drying mooring, then I drove home to triple-sew a
mainsail and collect half a hundredweight of boilerplate from the back of the garage. Much later, I went back to the drawing board for another solution.