max ebb: e-rudder time again

I'm tough, but I'm fair. Perhaps not tough enough, because they keep asking me back to do the pre-race equipment inspections for the race to Hawaii. I've learned how to shave at least an hour off the time commitment: The boat has to be ready; otherwise I turn around and go home. That means storm sails bent on, emergency rudder deployed, anchor chain and rode run out on the dock for measuring, overboard gear set up, jacklines rigged, and all the required portable gear on display. The racers often complain about having to set the trysail, but if it were not for this requirement, the storm canvas would never be out of the bag 'til the fi rst time it's needed, and that's the wrong time to fi gure out how it should be rigged. But truth be told, I do this mainly so I can fi nd the boat in the marina. I just look for that international orange trysail or storm jib. unclear which of us would be the victim. "Aloha, Max!" Lee shouted when I was still fi ve berths away. "I'm, like, glad we drew you for our inspector. You'll understand what I've cooked up for the e-rudder."

The emergency rudder was perfectly adequate for course-keeping when the boat was balanced.

My fi rst victim this year was a big old IOR racer, refurbished for the race. But when I saw who was representing the boat for the inspection, it became

This was not the fi rst boat Lee had helped prep for a Hawaii race inspection, and she knew how to make it run smoothly. First she pointed me to the fresh-baked brownies in the galley. Then she handed me a binder with a full set of the required documents. It even included documentation for the battery replacement date for the light on the Lifesling. "All copies for you," she said."For the Inspection Commit-A small model emergency rudder, shown here deployed on a Merit 25, is made from discarded windsurfer centerboards and the top part of a broken windsurfer mast. tee's fi les." It was easy to run through the checklist. I couldn't even catch her on my favorite failure point, lifeline tension. "Seems a little loose," I said as I pulled transversely between the two most widely spaced stanchions. "You're only allowed two inches under eleven pounds of load." "Like, they changed it to nine pounds," Lee corrected. She was ready with a ruler and fi sh scale, although she called it a dynamometer. "See? Only 1.8 inches under eight pounds of force." She didn't get off as easily with anchor rode length. The anchor lines were run out on the dock for measurement, as requested. But there was a knot in one of them. It had been pieced together from two shorter lengths of three-strand nylon. "Sorry, this is a fail," I informed her with some satisfaction. "Anchor rode has to be continuous, one piece, 200 feet long." "But, like, what's the logic behind that?" Lee complained. "We have the required total length." "I think it's because they don't want anyone to piece the rode together from spinnaker sheets and guys," I speculated. "They want a dedicated anchor rode, not used for anything else, ready in emergencies at full length." "That's what we have," she protested. "But there's also lost strength in the knot," I said. "It's a proper carrick bend," she countered.

ALL PHOTOS MAX EBB

The large size e-rudder — in this case for a 45 ft IOR boat — is made from centerboards from wornout 15-ft Laser Bahias. The rudder stock could have come from a broken carbon spinnaker pole, but in this case it had to be purchased new.

"Same as a bowline for lost strength," I answered. "And it won't run through a bow chock." "Okay," she sighed. "I guess we have to buy a new 200-ft rode." "Tell you what I'll do," I said after a pause, having had the satisfaction of scoring the point. "If you short-splice the two segments together, for a permanent joint, I'll count it as one line." "Old rope," she mumbled. "Not very easy to work - and I don't have the splicing kit on board." "Use needle-nose pliers," I suggested. "Better than any splicing tool." Lee accepted my offer, and to keep me busy while she did the splice up on deck, she set me up at the nav station watching videos of the boat's person overboard recovery drill and the emergency rudder test. "I'll want to see at least fi ve tucks," I added as she left the cabin. Video is a major time saver at inspection time. No more live test of the emergency rudder required, if the video is honest. The trouble is, sometimes the video doesn't show that the main helm was nudged a little between the left turns and the right turns, or between the tacks and the jibes. Even a locked helm can jiggle to the side that helps the turn. But the video did show the boat tacking and jibing in ten knots of wind as required, helm locked on center, and locked well enough to keep me satisfi ed. The emergency rudder could not always overcome the weather helm, but seemed perfectly adequate for course-keeping when the boat was balanced. What surprised me was that Lee had not made another one of her underwater sail soft rudders out of sailcloth and spars. This one had actual foils. I helped myself to another brownie. "Why the design change?" I asked after I had reviewed all the videos and the splice was fi nished, and Lee had returned to the cabin. "Too much freeboard and a closed transom," she said. "The geometry of the soft rudder didn't work so well for this boat. Also, like, I wanted to try something new. This is an evolution of the fi nned steering oar I was developing two years ago. On larger boats the oar has to be closer to vertical, steering by twisting about its long axis, so it was getting to look more like a conventional rudder stock anyway."

"Why the twin blades?" "First off," Lee explained, "I don't want to build foils from scratch. Too much time and money for a starving grad student. And, like, the university sailing club is always throwing away old dinghies, and the rudder blades and centerboards are usually still in good shape and there to be scavenged. Good foil shapes, and, like, known strength and quality. Windsurfer centerboards and broken mast parts, too, found in abundance in the sailing club dumpster. That's for the small-size version of this design, for Express 27- and Santa Cruz 27 size boats." "But this inverted Bonanza V-tail confi guration. Where did that come from?" "Same problem and same solution that produced biplane aircraft," said Lee. "Need a lot of area without a lot of bending on the stock. Also I like the structural effi ciency of triangular bracing. There's a tie bar between the blades, so the blades are loaded at about the same points as when they were in use as dinghy centerboards." As she spoke I climbed back up to

"The rudder blades and centerboards are usually still in good shape and there to be scavenged."

the cockpit and walked to the stern, to examine this double-blade beast at close range. "Did you also fi nd that nice piece of carbon tubing in a dumpster?" I asked. "No luck scoring broken carbon spinnaker pole fragments from big boats," Lee admitted. "Like, we didn't start scrounging around boatyards early enough. Had to buy the rudder stock and pay trans-nasally." "How do you solve the problem of lining up the gudgeons and pintles while trying to ship the rudder in a seaway?" I asked, not noticing until it was too late that Lee's design did not have any gudgeons or pintles. "Not a problem," Lee answered. "Rig the port and starboard lower lashing lines through the two padeyes near the bottom of the transom, and pull the rudder stock into position. The top support is on the top rail of the stern pulpit, or lashed between the stern corner brackets if the stern rail doesn't go all the way across. So, like, the only holes in the boat are for those two lower padeyes. For the small-boat model, you can even lash to the horizontal beam of the outboard bracket, so, like, no new holes in the boat at all." "Is the stern pulpit really strong enough to support a rudder stock? "For sure. Big separation between lower and upper bearings, I mean, between upper and lower rudder stock lashings, makes the load on the top support pretty small. And like, if the stern pulpit is too wimpy for this, it's too wimpy to be a good stern pulpit."

That reminded me of one more test I had to do: "PERSON OVERBOARD!" I yelled, attempting to take Lee by surprise and starting my stopwatch. Lee immediately pressed the MOB button on the cockpit GPS display, then put her hand on the release lanyard for the overboard gear. "Less than fi ve seconds," I said. "Not bad. Make sure everyone on the crew can react as fast, in case you're the one who goes over." To wrap up the inspection, I checked off some of the remaining required cabin fi xtures and safety gear. It was all there, except I didn't see any wiring for the backup running lights, and this boat only had a masthead tricolor. "We have battery-powered portable LED lights," Lee explained. "Not bright enough," I said. "They have to meet the same brightness requirements as the primaries." "Check out the new ones. Two-mile visibility, as per COLREGS. These lights are better as emergency backups because they don't rely on ship's batteries. I mean, the main batteries might be dead or, like, underwater when you really need the spares." This was a new approach to backup running lights, but I was swayed by Lee's logic. After she showed me that they really did have enough triple-A batteries onboard, I called the inspection complete, and took one more brownie for the road. They say that preparing a boat to race to Hawaii requires a water-cooled credit card. But if you can build the emergency rudder out of parts from the marina dumpster, the load on the card's cooling system will be just a little bit less. max ebb

Emergency rudders from the dumpster, large and small. It's amazing what you can do with leftover windsurfi ng parts, a little hardware and some ingenuity.

I didn't notice until it was too late that Lee's design did not have any gudgeons or pintles.