15 degree rudders
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After the previous weekends howler (Exmoor Beastie was postponed doe to 50mph gusts!) I finally got around to launching 2017 at Starcross yesterday. The new overdeck controls work perfectly (thanks Neil) and after a few minutes throwing some tacks and gybes, I felt comfortable enough to join in with the club race. The boat certainly seemed vice free and easy to handle even when the breeze perked up to force 4/5 – great fun on a broad reach and for the first few rounds I was able to stay very close to a couple of modern carbon rigged Finns.
My only thought was that, compared to my Merlin, the helm felt quite heavy upwind even though I was keeping the boat fairly flat, and the tiller was pretty well on the centre line. It wasn’t an excessive amount of weather helm, but I’m guessing this might be normal with a 30 degree rudder and hence the reason people now seem to use a 15 degree rudder? Or perhaps I need to start playing with mast rake etc?
Dave,
you are right about the rudder. 30 deg rudders are always heavy on the helm, even when the boat is well balanced. If the rig C of E is too far back it will obviously make a difference. But you really should to try to switch to a 15 deg rudder. It is possible to convert an existing rudder, the blade is the same shape, just rotated so you can add a wedge at the front & to the top of the head then re-attatch the tiller. Sounds a bit tricky, but reasonably straight forward & a lot cheaper than a new blade!!
Thanks Terry. The 15 degree conversion does seem a fairly simple job – just need to build up the courage to take a hacksaw to this otherwise really nice Milanes fixed rudder blade
X, I feel a sketch from you coming on showing the conversion of rudders to 15deg!!!!!!!!?????
RRRRRRRR
X.
do a pdf file of the rudder send it to Dave Cooper i’m sure dave could fix a link to the sketch on this site.
Dave/
What do you recon :?:
cheers
RRRRRRRRR
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