Catalina 25 Sailboat Refit: Broken Rudder

One day, for no reason at all, the rudder snapped at a very inopportune time. I was purposefully shooting the gap on the rocky Los Angeles Harbor entrance at San Pedro and once I cleared the Los Angeles Lighthouse I tightened up my sheets/wind angle, and watched the bow round up into the wind. I reached down to find a completely gutless rudder. Just nothing. The feeling in your hand....it must be the same feeling cartoon characters have when the wheel completely snaps off the car they are driving and they slowly look at the camera. Only having been in this situation can I understand where that famous look originates. Its not from a place of fear or concern, but a calm and puzzling disbelief of the reality in your hand.

Now, with that being said, the very next though firing through my synapses comes similar to slamming your gas pedal to the floor when you are already at 200 MPH. Complete focus, white knuckled, and with no room for error. All the while, a tiny Devil dances around back of my head doubting I will get out of this unscathed, and forces me to consider a plan for swimming around the violent battle field where the sea meets the jagged rocks.

The bow spun 180 degrees, sending me straight into the rocks at about 7 knots. I let out the main, which flew leeward and sucked up my mainsheet through the block in the same quick and sloppy manner a child would consume spaghetti. Now that I had spun 180, the jib backwinded onto the mast in a hove-to position, and I stood there, rudderless, hoping I wouldnt hit the rocks. As I turned backwards, towards my pre-snapped course heading, I watched my broken rudder bob about the harbor not even 20 feet from my stern. Irony.

Luckily when your boat is rudderless the hove-to position doesnt really work as intended, and the jib somewhat turned into a makeshift spinnaker, pushing me downwind, past the rocks, through the harbor entrance, into the ocean, and unfortunately into the shipping lane of the busiest harbor on the Pacific coast. I called the coast guard at this time, who were nice enough to remove my aimless boat from freighter traffic.

So how the hell did the rudder snap? Upon inspection, the break was at the bolts of the pintle, and the best guess is over time water had accumulated in those bolt holes, chilled and expanded many times, and weakened the overall structure. When I tightened up my sheets the "airplane wing foil" was created, which added pressure known as "weather helm" and snapped it free and clear where you see below.

The rudder here should be about 4 feet longer than you see here.

New rudder, Its a beast, 76 inches top to bottom. I purchased it from Foss Foam, the company originally created the rudders for Catalina when they were based in California.