199: SHEARING A RUDDER AT SEA - TERRIFYING - How to drop, prep, re-install a rudder in the water

Everett's been aboard for about two weeks and it's been so much fun having him. He is learning all about the boat and Brown has been teaching him how to snorkel and free dive which he is taken to like a fish. We were really pleased with our progress moving north until we arrived in Shroud Key and had to stay put for about a week due to strong northerly winds. Trying to cross the bank to New Providence with high winds makes for a very unpleasant trip and it's also really hard on the boat. So we had plenty of time to explore the mangrove rivers in the north and in the south which we had never done. Shroud is a beautiful place with endless things to do. Finally after a week the winds subsided enough to be safe to sail up to Clifton Bay where we spent one day seeing our friend Ruthie and snorkeling the statue and reefs. At daybreak the next morning we picked up anchor and started our two-day sail to Bimini. We were so excited to see a new island and continue making progress towards crossing the Gulf Stream but on this day it wasn't meant to be. We were heading to the shoal, Mackie Shoal. I was at the helm probably for about three and a half, four hours. I was tired. It was time for me to go down below. I put my head on the pillow and about 10 minutes later I felt the entire boat just swerve off to the side. When I took the helm we were about 20 miles north of New Providence, 15 miles from Andros, and 15 miles from Chubb. Literally right in the middle of that northwest passage. Everything was going really well. The sails were up. We were doing seven, seven and a half knots and the wind was coming from our hind quarter so it was perfect. All of a sudden the boat just veered off to the right and I thought oh autopilot must have just failed. Sometimes that happens but when I looked at the instruments the autopilot was still connected and I thought that's really weird and then when I turned the helm the boat didn't turn at all and I thought uh-oh something's definitely wrong. First thing we did was we went in and looked at the steering, also the cables. Everything looked fine. We were like well what is going on? So we got on the sat phone and we called our friend Lorenzo and the abacos and Lorenzo thank you for always picking up and he says well you know I'm not sure what it is if you've done all these checked all these other things it's probably not what's the matter but see if you have both your rudders. I couldn't believe it when Brown picked his head out of the water and said that the rudder was gone. A thousand things went through my head but the biggest one was just disappointment that we very clearly were not going anywhere near the United States in the next few days. We were really going to be stuck. The starboard rudder was gone. Totally sheared. Shocking and we're in 3,000 feet of water. My son could not believe how cool and calm and collective we were and I just may not have even realized how bad the situation was but also at the same time I realized panicking over this is not going to help anything. What we ended up doing was steering with the throttles. Both engines were working fine. I just changed the alternator on one of them but thankfully for with a four-hour trip I was able to intensely focus on getting the boat back to New Providence and I couldn't take my eye off the bow for you know more than like 10 seconds. I had to pee a couple of times and Eileen had to hold a bucket for me because once the bow starts going out and you have to understand there are waves coming at us and the wind's coming at us so it's real tenuous. Miraculously sailing vessel Oceanus was coming the opposite direction and they hailed us on the radio and asked us what was wrong and we told them we lost a rudder. We could not believe it that Oceanus had just replaced two of their rudders and they were on a Leopard 39 and they told us about Fosfoam, a company in Florida that just makes rudders and said they have the Leopard 44 model. So I called Fosfoam and David was amazing and before we even got back to New Providence I put in an order for a rudder and all we needed to do was get some measurements. Another awesome thing was they had just replaced a rudder for a Leopard 44 and had the specific drawings from that owner so he sent me those drawings and said please just confirm three or four measurements versus having to take all of the measurements. The engines held out great and we made it back to New Providence. Brown did an amazing job under complete pressure and stress. It was tough getting back but that was definitely the right move and the reason why we went back there is because there's airports, there's plenty of help, there are some parts and if we need to bring in parts we can bring them in by plane and we probably could have kept on going with one rudder all the way to Bimini but crossing the Gulf Stream with one rudder is not a good idea. I was making phone calls to get some help. I booked a guy called Roll who came, a friend of Lorenzo's, to help us drop the rudder the next day. I was booking all of these things on our way back and literally by the time we dropped anchor back in Clifton Bay we had our plan established which was amazing. When we got back there and got settled and just kind of took a deep breath our friends came over to take a look with us under the boat to see what had actually happened and the diameter of the shaft was two inches 316 stainless steel and you could see half of it the metal had been corroded and the other half looked brand new so very clearly there was a crack that over time water was getting into and corroding the the rudder shafts and what we surmised from this we don't know for sure but when we dragged anchor in Saint Martin way back when our rudder on the starboard side was actually in the sand we didn't know how bad it was we could look under the boat with lights and see that the rudder was in the sand probably about three or four inches in we didn't know how badly it was jammed at I'm looking at the rudders both rudders there is just some scraping on the starboard rudder but both rudders are intact and while we didn't think that there was any damage to it because we looked at just the external part of it we did not realize that the shaft had actually been bent so we surmised then that over time it corroded and that's why with the amount of pressure we had on our sail to Bimini that the rudder sheared so the next morning roll came to help us drop the rudder which was really helpful because we were not really sure how to do that bridle off and then the pin will be the last thing I pull and that will send the rudder down okay what we like to do too is if we could have someone in there probably just to tie around the waist of the rudder yep just so if you can't handle it yeah in the water in the water and then tie it to a cleat so it doesn't slam okay it was helpful to be able to talk through all of this with with him and also ensuring that no water was going to come in the boat which our sleeves that hold the shaft are actually watertight so we had no ingress of water into the boat okay rudder is free and no water in a little water no water no water no water after we took the measurements we reinstalled the rudder and then we just had to wait for about two weeks FOSFOM was able to fabricate our new rudder in about a week and a half and then we found someone in the Bahamas who had a private plane who could fly the rudder in and for a small amount of money we were able to pay them to go up from Palm Beach to FOSFOM pick up the rudder not having to create it which would have cost us another couple of hundred dollars they put it on a private plane and flew it into New Providence so we saved a ton of money in time by going with this private aircraft and not having it on a ship it flew in on a Sunday and Sunday afternoon they dropped it off to us there it's a big moment where are we going we're gonna pick up our rudder at Lyford Key right now a rudderly ridiculous situation has been absolved finally I hope it fits that's the key it's a perfect morning to try and install our new rudder which we're taking apart now and hopefully this will go well we've got a drop the old rudder here well just the shaft is left it's going to be easy if we drop anything it's going to be easy to find it's like a swimming pool out there perfect day there she is she's got a nice coat of gel coat on there let's get to it Admiral all right step one is to take the autopilot arm off two bolts out so far we got the autopilot arm out four bolts are out now we got to get the key out getting the key out is proving to be very difficult what I did was I put the vice grip on there super tight and then I took the hammer and hit it like this because I couldn't get up here and I couldn't get in here perfect hit it like that and it pulled it out great job rudder is the old rudder is out brown is going down to get the the old one recognize this yeah this is Lauren she's our hero she's a solo sailor on the boat in front of us and she came over to help us put the rudder in so she's had rudder problems also yes and she's a free diver which makes up for Mr. No Breath over here hey what are you talking about anyway so they're going to try and get in the water and put the rudder in and I'm going to try and guide it she's going to be our she's going to be our good luck charm Lauren also is a charter captain look her up and also subscribe to her YouTube channel here are the water heroes teamwork our angel our rudder angel Lauren it was amazing teamwork so brown's trying to get the key in it's got to go halfway in realized was when we received the rudder it did not have the barrier coats that we needed on the rudder it had enough where we could install it and go for a few months so we thought when we went to Guatemala we would haul out and while we were hauled out it would be easy to drop the rudder we we're back dropping the rudder because we need to paint the rudder brown's already starting to take the bolts off and tomorrow maybe we'll drop it one of my favorite things to do rudder it has to be barrier coated with an anti-osmosis coat because this has a polyester resin is what you use the fiberglass for this and gel coat on top of it is how it's been prepped but the only problem is both of those absorb water over a period of time so what we're going to do is we're going to take this rudder out and just make sure that there's no blistering if there is we'll deal with it and if there's not we will sand with 100 grit sandpaper and then we will put three coats of pettit epoxy primer protect up underneath and what this does is it keeps water from being absorbed into the fiberglass and the gel coat and that is what we put the anti-fouling paint on top of unfortunately we are in a pretty nasty water area hey boating is all about doing the tough jobs and normally it's in beautiful places you know if you pay somebody to do all this stuff you'll just unless you're a million you know a multi-millionaire you're gonna get broke lauren landers where are you when we need rudder work guys you want to try this with the a new tool oh yeah oh wow yeah yeah juan was able to get the key out took five guys over the course of a couple of days to try and get that out he finally got it out amazing and we were then able to drop the rudder thanks to the help of mike who lives next door to us okay we have several projects going on right now two of them are rudder related first thing is we had a heck of a time getting this key which fits right here this thing is way too tight so what i'm going to do is take a sander and sand both ends here so it goes in and out a whole lot better i've got a 60 grit sandpaper on here pretty rough stuff oh my goodness this is gonna make all the difference in the world i'd be really surprised if this doesn't do the trick whoo this thing is nice and hot hopefully she just pops in and out now it's hot so i'm just gonna let this thing cool down we're gonna get started on the caulk and then um and then we'll come back to this finally happy with this right here this fits in great without being too loose pull it right out gotta love it caulking this rudder and if you can see it's nice and smooth all over i use 5200 check out that 5200 slow cure it's gonna skin over in 24 hours so i'll be able to paint over it and it'll finish the curing process while it's in the water that's one good thing about 5200 so wow look at how beautiful this workshop is at monkey bay marina just check out all the tools that they have here for people to use there's table saws there's all kinds of stuff and here we are oh look at that look at that garden back there and then here we are working on the rudder and i'm cleaning it up right now so we can prepare it for sanding then we're going to sand it with 80 to 100 grit sandpaper just knock the sheen off of it and then hit it with mineral spirits and then we should be ready to put the petite protect epoxy primer on this what that is because it's an anti-osmosis coat and it keeps water from going through the gel coat and into the fiberglass fiberglass is great stuff and gel coat is too but weaknesses that it has is that it attracts water over a long period of time so we're going to put our many coats i can using this quart can and then once we're done with that i'm going to put this back on the boat we're not going to do bottom paint on it yet i'm just going to let it go until we do a haul out probably a year from now it's just so idyllic to be working here it's just incredible i'm able to get this down almost everything off but the base of these barnacles it's pretty tough stuff so hopefully the sander sure the sander will get through all that preparation is everything when it comes to painting it's basically something as important as a rudder here i don't know whether you see it in the light but they're just ripples in the gel coat we need to get that all leveled out the fact that this was dirtied before from being on the boat has actually helped me because now i can tell when we're down to a flat gel coat level so here we still got barnacle bits and that type of thing and we're just going to go over this until it's nice and smooth now we need to hand sand over here to be very careful with the edges because i think they have some 5200 because this thing was sandwiched over foam you need to be real careful around the the 5200 caulk here i can flat sand this right here so we use hand sanding so it doesn't get too rough here and cut through to the foam and this is sanded down really nicely okay here we are we've got it primed with anti-osmosis paint and two thick coats of bottom paint and she's ready to put back on the boat tomorrow we're going to try and drop this through the sleeve that the rudder shaft goes into so that we can bring it through the bottom and tie it to the end of the rudder thereby being able to pull the rudder up and help whoever's underwater not have to work so hard ladies and gentlemen welcome to rudder ridiculousness it's gone oh no way perfect it's time for the monkey to get in the water brown is reaching down the boat hook now to grab the line system worked so far so good so there's a little bar that's welded in there and that's used for the emergency tiller right at the top and we're using that so what we're doing is definitely a puzzle eileen's getting some additional support on the rudder now this water is about 12 feet deep and there's about two feet visibility so have to make sure we maintain control and possession of the rudder at all times or we might lose it and then down here unfortunately you can't pull straight up and you don't want any sideways action on that tube down there because if that happens we'd have a bunch of water coming in you've got the navy sealed ready to go in the water oh yeah you gotta put the delrin rings have to go on oh shoot no that's okay just say it so just redo this tell me if you want me to pull okay okay go ahead yep all right slow slow slow slow what yeah we got it done you can come in are you sure yeah we're good okay all right check in the corner rope yeah you want me to take it apart dang that was so much easier than last time