Prosthetic for a rudder?

Posted by Dusty Yevsky on Dec 19, 2007

I'm currently in the throes of building a CLCSailRig for a CLC Triple. I'm up to the point of installling a rudder and therein lies the rub. The plans call for simple large rudder and the large size is apparently needed for efficient sailing. As far as I can tell, no commercially available rudders are large enough. The rudder in the plan doesn't have any nice features like kick-up or return, like on a commercially available rudder, and I'm not keen on doing the R&D to add these features. So here's what I was thinking. What if I take a rudder like a Feathercraft K2 and add a removable wooden "sleeve" over the blade large enough to provide the required surface area. This arrangement will also allow me to have a normal size rudder when not in sailing mode.The only reasons I can think of for not doing this is that this might overstress the parts on the rudder, specifically the pin used to attach the rudder to the boat. Also, the Frankenrudder might not be stiff enough. Unfortunately, I'm not an naval architect ( I don't even play one on TV) so I don't know how to evaluate the forces. There are probably other pitfalls I'm overlooking.

Has anyone ever tried anything like this?

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