We lost our rudder over a year ago during our Atlantic Crossing from The Canary Islands to St Lucia in the Caribbean. The rudder made a rather sneaky exit and at the time there was no catastrophic event to alert us to the problem. We just began to have trouble steering a straight course. In hindsight, there might have been a bang but in all honesty, anyone who has sailed a catamaran would know there are plenty of bangs that go on while blue water sailing.
We only really worked out something was amiss when Paikea started to feel unbalanced and the autopilot was having to work really hard to keep the rudders straight. At first, we thought that perhaps it was weed caught on the rudders that was unbalancing the boat. However, after slowing Paikea down and putting the GoPro underwater we were able to see the issue in bleak reality. The port rudder stock had failed and snapped off at the hull leaving us with only a now very hard-working starboard rudder.
After a bit of time spent playing with different sail configurations to better balance the boat and keep up our speed so we could steer effectively, we settled back into the task of crossing the Atlantic.
Once we arrived in St Lucia, our first plan of action was to inspect the hulls and find out what happened. Once we knew what had happened we could then make a plan as to what to do next. Our first option was to try and find a temporary replacement rudder. We had hoped that there would be plenty of spares hanging around perhaps something left over from storm-damaged boat on offer in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any rudders, and of course the more we thought about it the more problems we had to overcome. Would the rudder stock fit? Would it be roughly the same size? Whatever we did find we would probably have to do quite a bit of work to retrofit it to Paikea.
So our solution would have to be that we had to get a new one. To buy one was going to be a lot of money and it wouldn’t be exactly what we wanted so we really had to build our own. We sourced the carbon fibre rudder stock from C-Tech in New Zealand. Shayne designed the stock he wanted and C-Tech made it and freighted it to us in Antigua.
We used Janes Yacht Services to receive the package for us and the cost of 2 carbon stocks was about the same as getting the same made out of stainless steel here in the Windward Islands.
To make the rudder blades we sourced the foam from Wind in Martinique. We had epoxy and enough fibreglass on board to get the project underway. Martinique is a great place to source materials if you need to do boat repairs in the Windward Islands. As we already mentioned Shayne designed these rudders for Paikea. We always collect a lot of data while sailing. The information we learn on performance and efficiency helps us understand and improve Paikea’s design.
In our latest video we show how we made the composite rudders for Paikea including how we shaped the foam blank and attached it to our stock. Lot’s of information in this one. We hope you enjoy it and tune in next time when we show you how we laminated the fibreglass skin to the blade.