New Rudder

Monday morning we take the boat over to Browns for a short haul to install the new rudder. I removed the old rudder, myself with the help of Scotty the travel lift operator. 

I talked to Albert about having his guys drilling the new holes on the stainless steel post on the new rudder and then installing it. I worked on laying out where to drill the holes on the new rudder post. Albert's guys were suppose to show up after lunch, but they never came, they were busy working on another Canadian cruising sailboat that has some major drive shaft problems. So at this point I decided if I wanted it done right, I would do it myself. I was not really interested in drilling stainless steel myself, especially since my electric drill is a little under powered for the job. With help from my able assistant, Linda, I was able to drill out the 3/8” diameter holes using a series of progressively larger drills. 

Drilling holes in the rudder post

I was not able to complete drilling out the other ½ inch diameter holes, the chuck on the drill kept slipping at the higher torque. 

 A local fellow stopped by later in the evening and loaned me his electric drill with a ½ inch diameter chuck. 

Since I got a late start after waiting for Albert's guys, we had to spend the night in the travel lift slings.

Interestingly, we are the third cruising sailboat, on the hard, living on their boat in Browns Boatyard this night.

In the afternoon Robert comes over to introduce me to Ed on a Catalina 42 that is at the end of the dock at the Nassau Harbor Club where we are staying. I had not yet met Ed, but we could not figure out why the Catalina 42 was on the end of the dock with their stern to the prevailing wind. Well, it turns out they got towed in after their rudder fell off coming from the Exhumas about 20 miles from Nassau. They maybe interested in using our old rudder with some additional modifications to get back to Florida.

After hearing their story of getting towed, we feel quite fortunate that we had Joe Louis from Chub towing us with his twin 200 HP outboards. Ed and his wife got towed by a small under powered single engine boat. Sounded like the Three Stooges were trying to tow them. The tow lines got wrapped around the props of both boats multiple times and they charged them $3,000 dollars. BASRA, Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association arranged this tow boat.