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Tartan 33 rudder problems
Author Last Post
When we bought our T 33 last year the surveyor suggested that the rudder would need watching and eventual repair. There were some cracks in the skin and rust stains coming through. During the survey we attempted to force the rudder shaft to move within the rudder but could not make it move despite some aggressive twisting. There was no evidence of delamination. After pulling the boat for winter a few weeks ago I decided to drop the rudder, an easy task on the 33, and do some exploratory surgery over the winter. I thought the tartanlist might be interested in this. This is what I found: The upper half of the rudder was covered with bondo up to 3/8" thick. This was used as fairing over thorough bolted stainless steel plates on both sides of the rudder. I thought the rudder seemed on the heavy side but chalked it up to complete water inundation of the foam! By the way the bondo fairing job looked good. Besides being a bit fat, after comparing to another T33 rudder in the yard, the shape was excellent.

After removing the repair plates I found that the rudder was split all the way through between the bottom of the shaft on the leading edge all the way to the trailing edge. Before giving up for the day I chopped down to the end of the rudder shaft where it meets the steel web and the second photo shows what I found. The rudder struck something which caused the damage you see. The bottom leading edge of the rudder has a small repair so I am sure the deep rudder could easily have levered the steel at this weak point, even with a small impact on grounding or striking something, and caused the damage.

Despite having a massive 3" OD, 1/2 wall thickness, stainless rudder stock, the shaft is welded to a mild steel web. That hole in the web for allowing the foam to join through the web is too close the critical weld at the bottom of the shaft. If the crack had reached the hole in the web the rudder would most likely have dropped off the boat but even at this level of damage the rudder had to be flopping around quite a bit. At any rate it is better to break the rudder than the shaft tube and hull. Now I need to figure out what to do next.

Rob Gleeson
T33 #125
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