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Finally pulled the rudder out of my Sailboat. As she is a full keeler on a trailer, this is not as easy as it seems.

First I had to remove the retaining bolt and pin from the rudder head where the tiller connects. Once that was done, it took some careful tapping with a hammer and use of a large pipewrench to twist it loose. Everything is bronze, so it is a bit soft.

Once the head was loose, I had to lift the rudder itself out of it's lower pivot and pull it to the side so it could be lowered. Once it hit the dirt, I realized I had an issue. Down went the nose of the trailer and then out came a shovel to dig a small hole. Eventually though, it was free.

The rudder is solid glassfibre and bronze, so you can guess how heavy it is. It also has some significant damage from sometime in it's past. Under two layers of bottom paint I found "fairing material" (looked more like Bondo to me). Once I had it all ground away, I was left with this:





I got the repairs started yesterday after work.. I will post up some more pictures later once I get further along

Good images of what look like a challenging project.

it was not all that hard to repair. I am pretty competent with glassfibre. It was just a matter of cleaning out the chunks of all the old filler, making a semi-mold to keep the resin in, adding some fibre, and going to town to make a solid and sturdy fill.



It's what I did afterwards that is neat. It is still drying as I need to add a few more coats of resin to smooth it all out.. but I wrapped the rudder in real Carbonfibre. This is going to be one strong rudder



It's almost going to be a shame to paint it

Nicely done.

Looks great. Almost a shame you have to drown it under the boat.

Could be the image but it appears slightly larger and the lower tail a bit deeper.

Any special challenges working with carbon fiber?

CF is a lot thicker than glassfibre. It's more a mat of woven ribbons than a fabric made of woven strands. It is however, very strong, where you can break glassfibre strands, CF does not go so easily.

I still need to sand down the edges and finish it all up nice and neat, so it does look a little ragged at the moment. The way the keel is on the Sea Sprite 23, the bottom of the rudder (the part on the ladder to the left) is almost horizontal the way it is curved. It then gets longer as it goes upwards toward the surface of the water (not that it ever breaks the surface on it's own, it stays completely submerged)

Now I need to cut out the semi-circular cavity that the rudder rides in. Whatever it was that Flirt hit, it not only damaged the bottom of the keel and rudder, but cracked the keel (which is hollow) from top to bottom in that cavity, and there are numerous cracks radiating from the tube where the rudder shaft exits the hull.. it all needs to be ground down/cutout/repaired/replaced