Drilling into my rudder

[Stephen Butler]

We replaced our rudder last summer, due to hurricane damage, but we would have needed to do it anyway within a year or sooner, due to the rusting-out of the non-stainless steel grid used in our 1990 C34.  A couple of observations watching the yard doing the work: 1-If your rudder is "weeping" and you have an older C34 with the non-stainless grid, you may be changing the rudder sooner than later. 2-The rudder's weight can be handled by one or two men, but the cg nevertheless makes it very clumbersome. 3-The yard absolutely refuses to do rudder work on any boat, while boats are in the water, for the reasons stated by Michael.  If we were going to change our rudder again, it would be on the hard, with the admiral supervising my digging a hole to get the clearance needed, or getting the yard to suspend me in their lift for the 30 minutes it would take to do the job. Changing the rudder is an "easy" job that can quickly go seriously and expensively wrong.  Just a thought.