So my little trailer sailer has quite bad weather helm at times, mainly due to some badly conceived rig modifications.
I think I am out of rig options to try to remedy, but think that there maybe improvements to be made in the rudder dept. The original appears to have been "designed" in about 5 seconds on a Friday afternoon, it is a rectangle and there is no foil shape in the cross section.
So I perused the second hand world for a better rudder and found that people really like to ask a lot of money for second hand bullshit and that it wasn't going to find an easy replacement on the cheap.
I did however end up with a rudder from a bigger boat for not too much money thinking about using the bottom part for a blade, ok, I didn't think about it at all, I just hit buy it now. When it arrived it looked way too big, so I put it in the shed for a few weeks.
Got some bad news yesterday so I fucked off the afternoon and took a six pack into the shed. I hope I haven't trashed a perfectly good rudder........ But this thing might work, maybe.
The first round of questions relate to whether it might even work, due to the foil shape the blade is clearly a lot fatter than the original, is that a problem ? My half assed theory is that there is clearly more drag, because it's fatter, but if I'm not constantly yanking the tiller maybe it will even out. The new blade tapers towards the bottom , but will be a bit deeper so area should be similar.
The aim is to reduce weather helm, not really to increase performance.
Or is this a shit idea because it's too far?
I think I am out of rig options to try to remedy, but think that there maybe improvements to be made in the rudder dept. The original appears to have been "designed" in about 5 seconds on a Friday afternoon, it is a rectangle and there is no foil shape in the cross section.
So I perused the second hand world for a better rudder and found that people really like to ask a lot of money for second hand bullshit and that it wasn't going to find an easy replacement on the cheap.
I did however end up with a rudder from a bigger boat for not too much money thinking about using the bottom part for a blade, ok, I didn't think about it at all, I just hit buy it now. When it arrived it looked way too big, so I put it in the shed for a few weeks.
Got some bad news yesterday so I fucked off the afternoon and took a six pack into the shed. I hope I haven't trashed a perfectly good rudder........ But this thing might work, maybe.
The first round of questions relate to whether it might even work, due to the foil shape the blade is clearly a lot fatter than the original, is that a problem ? My half assed theory is that there is clearly more drag, because it's fatter, but if I'm not constantly yanking the tiller maybe it will even out. The new blade tapers towards the bottom , but will be a bit deeper so area should be similar.
The aim is to reduce weather helm, not really to increase performance.
Or is this a shit idea because it's too far?
