Day 265

No rudder is complete without a fancy mount in which to insert the bearing.The bearing isn't thick enough to reach the flange so a spacer will be made to stop the rudder from jumping up and down.
This will also allow clearance to ease removal of the rudder for bearing replacement.

I rescued Gena from the dispair of piecing it together with flatbar with my infinite expertise and wisdom in such curved matters! In other words I sliced off a chunk of curved flatbar.

She happily welded it into place, so I cut off another.

The result is the cool teardrop shape in the top photo that nobody will ever see unless they're swimming by underwater. Point is, we'll know it's there and that's good enough.

The "shoe" mount

The task that kept me busy otherwise was finding a place to mount the vain for the auto-helm. This wasn't really a problem before we built the radar arch, but once we saw how high the vain could reach it became one.

First the plate will be mounted part way down the transom as the height is already enough at that point. Then Gena will cut down the vain's tube a bit to further lower it. We hope this doesn't mess up the aerodynamics of it somehow. They are finnicky things from what we have heard. Case in point:

The rudder must be mounted in a way that the little tangs that connect the control cable aren't in the water while under way, or oscillation may occur. We don't even know where the water will be aft of the transom while under way (different from the actual waterline ) so guesswork and availabilty of some adjustment will be the only way.

Here's the vain mounting plate.

We almost forgot! Cables coming down from the radar arch "must" be fed inside the pipe into the boat. Problem was, I forgot to cut holes for them to feed through the deck. Origionally I wanted to put a lip in there but this would severely cut down on the size of the hole so a good sealant and gasket will have to suffice.

The rudder is still very easy to turn. Wew! A sigh of relief.

Day 265:
5 hours-finished the rudder shoe, cut and drilled plate for autohelm, cut holes for cable from arch