PDRacer #287 End Of Year Report



pdracer repairs on the beach


Eventually, You Break Your Boat

I went for a final sail of 2012 on #287 "Duck Soup", December 23 at Stillhouse Hollow Lake in central Texas.

I might oughta stayed home.

Landing on a rough beach for lunch break, I broke the rudder head on a barely-submerged abandoned corrugated steel drain pipe.

I went ahead and ate lunch, then made a very weak and temporary repair using extra hardware and the multi-tool I always carry on the boat.

I was using the reefed chinese lug sail, perfectly balanced by adjusting the location of the leeboard to the forward-most hole in the hull. This allowed me to sail with very little load on the rudder, carefully making the 1.6 miles back to the boat ramp. I could have dropped the sail and rowed back, but that would have been much less fun, lacking any challenge or suspense.



long bolt

I could have made a new rudder head from scratch, but I recovered the piece that broke off, so I just screwed-and-glued it all back together. Because some of the bolt holes were destroyed when the bolts were pulled through the wood, I added 3/4" washers under the bolt heads to spread the load.

5.4 miles for the day, 43.66 total miles for the year. 322.04 grand total miles since splash day February 2009.

Dave



weak temp repair

made it back

repaired