Curt! I've been waiting for the update. Thanks for posting.

The link works and I'm pretty crazy about your garden knome reveal.

Do you have any notion about how the location of the pivot point affects helm?

Great work,

E

   Hi Silver Salt...glad you could see both....I literally laughed when I played the video to see what you meant, and didnt even realize some of our yard art at home in TX was in the video!

As ar as the helm, my "theory" is that with the very raked transom the narrower rudder reduces the undesireable barn door effect.  It looks that way too when moving it back and forth on land.

My tests have been around Port Townsend WA, and I'm sick of having to plan my sail around currents, but on those sails the helm felt great, the tacks werent as nice as I may have liked but I'm writing that off, for now, to other things...will know soon.so either today or tomorrow I'm headed for an inland fresh water lake..no current, no salt yea!  

I'll post my more detailed test on tacking in a couple days, but the helm on straight sailing felt good.

Curt

   I can't see the picture in the Forum, but the video was terrific. It looks like a fine rudder. I especially like how deep it gets into the water and yet how fully it retracts. That will certainly solve the problem of the dory becoming less responsive if one sits too far forward.

I look forward to reading your freshwater report.

   Update:  Went out on small fresh water lake with 3-5 mph winds, light air.  I was pleasantly surprised how even at that low wind I could tack most of the time, instead of stalling before the wind brought the bow around like I remember with the stock rudder.  I totally agree with the other thread about gaining speed to carry through the turn but in that low air, "gaining speed" is not common.

I have two downhauls, one to bring the sail back for upwind and one to take it forward (down wind).  In this light air the ability to manage the sail did help with boat control.

That other thread also mentioned roll tacking, so this time out I expermented with rolling the boat both ways just before the tack, or in the tack.  Surprised to find out that any rolling on either side in either direction tack seems to help the boat "carve" the turn better and carry speed through the tack.  I also tried leaning the boat over  both directioins while straight sailing and it certainly didnt hurt boat speed, maybe helped. So, a question to you all about boat dynamics...is a hard chine, flat bottom boat with a skeg like a CLC NE Dory happier on it's edge a little?

When coming into shore I pulled up the dagger board but left the kick up rudder down on purpose.  The shore was sand/gravel and it tipped up just as nice as you please...seems the shock cord tension ia about right.  (I have epoxy rope on the leading edge so I dont care about wear).

Kick up rudder completely out of the way:  My new rudder hinges up so high that it actually points about 30 degrees up away from the water, and the rudder case slants up from the skeg.  SO...when I brought it in to shore I purposely tipped the bow up real high to pull it up on shore and checked the rudder and sure enough, the rudder case and rudder blade with still 8" or so from the gravel bottom and the boat was rocking in the skeg not the rudder...just the way I wanted it.  Now I'm ready for a high wind full speed beaching trial!

Curt