Fellow sailors
I had a wee incident yesterday that I wanted to share - as I backed out of my slip I let go of the wheel and the rudder abruptly swung to 90 degrees and made a sickenly loud crash. I was sure I was in deep water, but it sounded like my rudder hit something. It was absolutely stuck at 90 degrees stbd rudder. Hoping it was just steering gear I put the emerg tiller on, but rudder still stuck. I was thinking I had bent the rudder post. Went below to find that the rudder stop on the quadrant had jumped over the aluminum plates that brake the stop (these are sandwich-bolted onto the buttresses supporting the rudder post tube on both sides).
So it was a bit scary, but an easy fix - removed the stop from the quadrant, swung the rudder back to normal position, and re-attached the stops.
It seems to me the rudder has way too much swing, I don't think it really needs to go to almost 90 degrees. I also finally figured out that with this much swing it is impossible to hook up the Raymarine rudder sensor (a component of the autopilot - which only swings to 60 degrees each way). Has anybody changed the amount of rudder rotation - or is my set-up different than yours?
Greg Silver
Misty Cat 26C #121
St. Peter's, Cape Breton