It was a nice 30C, 10-15kn ENE onshore breeze in early December so we took the Fatty Knees out for a sail.
1 ft waves were breaking and the wind was blowing straight onto the beach. This made getting under way a bit more difficult than usual. I had to walk the bow out past the shore break, get the centreboard half down, bear the bow away, sheet in a bit, jump aboard, sheet right in and close haul away.
When just clear of the break i put the rudder blade full down, hoping to sail clear ..but it was a bit too early, a breaking wave caught the bow and washed us shoreward, the rudder blade bashed down into the sandy bottom a few times so it had to be raised again in order to sail clear of the lee shore. Once clear it was lowered again as usual.
All was good for at least 15-20 minutes, we sailed out off Cape Palleranda into a confused lumpy sea which was due to two wave directions meeting up, they came from the north and east. Once clear of the cape we tacked and set course for Rowes Bay end of the beach to the south of us.
After a few minutes there was a bump, loud bang then the rudder blade broke. At first i wasn't sure what had happened, the tiller felt strange. I thought we hit something, but nothing to be seen. Not a log was it a turtle? We saw the lower 3/4 of the blade floating astern, i checked the rudder which still apparently had a blade hanging down. On seeing the damage it became clearer, the rudder blade had split in half down the centreline. It was made of plywood so de-lamination allowed it.
I pulled the half blade up , as in its weakened state it may break off completely. Then we couldn't steer the boat. We kept an eye on the half blade floating away, it drifted off 5 m, 10m, 15m..disappearing for longer and longer below wave crests. I wanted to retrieve it, for curiosity's sake and possible repair.
So we decided on using the oar to steer the boat. Out of it's stow bag in the bow then the two parts of the oar clipped together (like a tent pole). At first it was shipped into a side rowlock and rowed to get the bow to turn towards the "blade overboard". This wasn't too good so next was to put the oar into a small notch in the transom and use it as a sweep oar - a quick way to rig up a jury steering system. This worked and we headed back to pickup the half blade.
Sailing back was quick enough but it was far harder to steer than normal. I held the sweep against the rudder stock head with one hand and steered with the other. (to make a better job a rope lashing would have been better)
Anyway we sailed back about 1km on a beam reach to downwind run in a fairly safe manner.
On the beach a closer inspection of the damage revealed that the blade had cracked just where the aluminium clamp ended, then the plywood split along a centreline de-lamination. The design of the lower swivel clamp was an accident about to happen. It appears to be an after-market possibly home-made job, not the original rudder.
