Has anyone bought the new rudder and how hard is it to install?
Anyone bought the wireless Furano. For 1300 and a pre existing i pad or i phone, not a bad deal???
Finally has anyone replace those crappy plastic porthole trim with alum or stainless portholes?
Hi,
For the portholes, I did not puchase new trim, but took them home and painted them with an aluminum finish paint.
Came out quite nice.
Of course new one in S.S would be better, but more $$$
cliff : Why don't you do as I did and add on to your existing rudder?
Look in the Mainsheet Tech Notes, not that hard to do if your present rudder is in good shape!! Think I did it for a couple of hundred $$. Only took a few days!!
A thought
We bought the elliptical rudder. It was moderately difficult to install. It comes from Catalina with the rudder stock too long and without holes drilled so the stock has to be cut down and drilled to fit. The rudder stock is double-walled stainless steel so we hired a machine shop to do it. I think others on the site have done it themselves but we did not have and could not borrow the tools to do it. Other than that, the process of dropping the rudder and installing the new one was pretty straight-forward although made difficult by the small space in the aft lazarette. Fortunately, I have a petite wife who is strong mechanically.
Have written this up before but could not find it. We lost our rudder to hurricane Wilma when the boat went over on the hard and "folded" our rudder. Ordered the new elliptical rudder from Catalina and picked it up at the Florida facility. Installation was done by the yard at Marathon Island and took about 2 hours if I remember correctly. The boat was lifted in the transporter slings, the old rudder dropped and measurements taken for the new rudder stock length and the required hole drilling, and the new rudder installed. Went very smoothly without any problems. Put on a coat of bottom paint and went back into the water. 2 points: 1) the performance of the elliptical rudder is much better than the old design, and 2) our old rudder did not have the ss grid and would have failed within a year or two so we were fortunate in a way. Hope this is of help.
A couple of questions:
1. Do you have a wing or fin keel?
2. What made you believe your "rudder would have failed within a year or two."?
We have a fin keel. As to the expected failure time, when the old rudder folded and separated, it exposed the inner grid (mild steel), which was very badly corroded (flaking). We took pictures of the broken rudder and corroded inner grid and showed them to several surveyors and all voiced the opinion that we were close to a failure. I have the pictures somewhere and will see if they can be found. Hope this is of help.
Guys : The big difference in the elliptical rudder is with the wing keel.
The original wing keel rudder does not have enough surface area when the wind get above 15+ kts!!
A really big difference!! My thought
Is the new rudder the same length as the old one? I have the wing keel and am nervous about the rudder hitting before the keel.
Yes, same length or very close. Less draft than the keel.
Lance : The new elliptical rudders for both the fin and wing keels are the same length, but additional surface has been added to the aft portion of the rudder surface.
In the Mainsheet tech notes I published drawings of both fin and wing keel rudders with an overlay showing the original and the elliptical design. Great information in those old Mainsheet tech notes.
A thought
With the port trims ...
I priced the local plastics manufacturer and found it was a tad over the top to have them remoulded.
With todays technology 3D printing may be the way to go .... would be cheaper if someone did a big order and maybe sold for a profit.
Tony
(I have sold Moonshadow but helping friend sail his down our east coast 500 n/mls)
Tony : Maybe a great idea to reproduce a rudder using a 3D printer, but I not too sure what its weight would be without the foam interior??
A thought
Good one, Ron!
Regarding Lewmar portlight trim rings. I obsessed about my cracked and broken ones; researching vacuum forming ( either myself in garage or professinally) repairing with West epoxy and fiberglas tape and filler and sanding and painting, finding a 3D printer large enough... All of these solutions would involve lots of my time and/or money and I would still end up with 25-year old Lewmar Old Standard ports. So I gave up and threw money at the problem. I bought 6 replacement New Standard Lewmar ports for $179 ea. installed them with Buty tape in one day. Problem solved! I still have plastic ports and plastic trim rigns but at least they are 2014, shiney smoked plexi, look like they go with the boat, don't leak, and if I ever need a new trim ring again (in my lifetime) they are available from Lewmar.
Noah, If you can find a place that makes those vacuum formed chocolate moulds for doing Easter bunnies and everything else, they can make a formed clear polycarbonate reproduction as long as you have one good one to be used as the form for the cement used for the form. You likely would not be successful at home. the Plastic needs to be dry stored in a heated bin for a certain amount of time or the plastic will get bubbles in it when heated. I used to work at place when I was a kid whom made chocolate moulds out of nearly anything someone walked in with. It may be worth your while to have them make a few hundred... I'll take a set.
The way it worked: a cement product called wedge lok was used to make a form of the item being copied. It was then drilled with many .030'' holes for the vacuum to pull the soft polycarbonate into the features. It was placed on top of a large vacuum tank. The plastic was held in a frame and suspended over a boxed in natural gas infrared heater until it became very soft and began to droop down. Then was quickly set on the form and vacuum applied. After cooling for a minute or two It was popped off and the flash either removed or made into a book so there were right and left sides that could be closed after filling with tempered chocolate.
That ship has sailed. Bought new ports to replace old and am happy with decision.