Making our own catamaran rudders
When we bought Paikea in 2018 she had only one working rudder. The starboard side had an emergency rudder made of some sort of plastic plate attached to the rudder stock. The emergency rudder was only supposed to be a temporary solution however the previous owner claimed he had bought the boat like that and had sailed all the way from Europe to Australia like that.
As you can imagine, it is something we have been keen to replace. Shayne had originally drawn up plans for the construction of 2 brand new rudders complete with new stocks and bearings however the cost of outsourcing a job like this is huge and when you are so far from home and on a budget you have to think outside the box.
Our solution presented itself when we found hidden under a limiting table a set of 2007 America’s Cup rudders. It would-be simple enough to make a fibreglass mould over the rudder. We could then reuse our existing rudder stocks and glue the new shells we made from the moulds to it.
The AC rudders are far longer than what we need so we chose the section that fitted our needs best and made the mould there. The dimensions are not quite what Shayne wanted but it was a quick and much cheaper option for us than outsourcing brand new rudders.
The rudders we made are fibreglass and foam with solid glass plate at the base of each rudder to allow us to attach winglets to each rudder once complete.