Yesterday was a good day for mothing. After completing a 14 mile keelboat race it was time to take the moth out in a decent breeze. The winds were 15-20 and kind of puffy, but I was eager to get out on the water with my new mothing knowledge and see if I could make the more stable on the foils. After cranking on the vang and then cranking it on some more I finely got the boat feeling good. I could go upwind and downwind without much trouble. Then the problems began. After bearing away in a big gust and heading downwind with a lot of pace I did my first high-speed nosedive with a full ejection from the boat. After swimming back to the boat and righting it again I tried to take off, but something was weird. The nose of the boat would launch out of the water but the stern wasn't lifting at all. After a few tries I checked the rudder foil and my suspicions were verified... the rudder foil was completely GONE. Apparently the nosedive had created enough force on the foil to completely strip the attachment bolt from the foil.
I tried to sail back to where I lost the foil knowing that it would float, but finding a black foil in rough water would be an almost impossible. Thankfully my parents where in the area on their Laser 28 and I flagged them down and told them to help me look for the foil. I knew that it was a long shot, but it was worth at least trying. I made a few passes but it was clear that mounting any meaningful search from the moth was almost pointless. Sailing without the benefit of the pitch control from the rudder was hard enough. I sailed dejectedly back to the marina pondering where I was going to get a new rudder foil. As I got back to the docks my parents were just pulling into their slip. I sailed by and my mother reached down and lifted up one fully intact black Bladerider rudder foil plucked from the water just downwind of where I crashed. OMG lucky! Thanks Mom & Dad!
But it turned out this was all very lucky indeed. When I got back to the dock and started pulling the boat from the water I noticed that the spreader attachment had pulled completely free from the mast. So had I not come in I would have risked completely loosing the rig.
So now it’s back to the shop to fix and improve these parts. My only big question now is how to best fix the rudder foil so it can’t come off ever again. The two choices as I see it is to embed a stainless nut into the rudder and then bolt on as before. The second option is to permanently fiberglass the foil onto the rudder. The bolt is nice because I can remove the foil for transport, but at the end of the day maybe the permanent attachment would be more secure and stiffer? What do you think?
4 comments:
Permanent attachment isn't as easy as it may seem; many rudders have been lost that were "permanently" fiberglassed onto their struts. You would need to rout rebates into both foils and fill them with carbon. Not impossible, but not as easy as putting a bigger bolt on there probably.
create a new carbon thread in the rudder.
lightly clean up the old thread in the rudder, just enough to bond to.
spray the bolt with release agent (wd40, specialist spray wax or similar)
wrap carbon uni tows around the bolt and jam/screw it into the hole while still wet. ensure there is plenty of uni around the bolt to create a lot of thread.
allow to cure then unscrew it. it will be hard to remove, but will come out eventually, take your time and watch-out, the bolt can get hot.
I had exactly the same thing - in my case the rescue crew kindly picked up the rudder horizontal foil. When doing the repair I found you can use a much longer machine screw than the standard bladerider screw, at least 1/4 inch but maybe 1/2 inch longer, can't remember exactly (on mine the longer one just screwed right in with no drilling). So I did the thread repair with the longer screw and it was much more solid. I think the BR repair note says cut the unis into short lengths before you do the wrap, which I did.
good luck
Tim
Thanks guys, I'll give that a try! Maybe I'll paint the foil bright yellow too.
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