emergency rudder

An Emergency Rudder for a Cal 39

This is a collection of photos of the emergency rudder built for Novia, a Cal 39-IV belonging to John and Judy Webb. The Cal 39-IV has a reverse transom. Notice how the top rudder bearing is projected out from the slope of the transom. This allows the rudder to be vertical, and keeps the rudder pintels fairly far apart, which makes the steering system stronger.

Shown assembled in the yard, you see an overview of the whole system here. Notice the difference in rudder area between the stock rudder and the emergency rudder. You would be correct in assuming that there would be less control with the emergency system. Also notice that there is no cassette with this installation, so rigging the emergency rudder on the pintels will be a difficult task. The rudder will be pushed around by the waves.

This is the system rigged in the water with the steering lines attached to the tube on the top of the emergency rudder.

In this close up you can see the pintels and gudgeons which both need to be aligned to install the emergency rudder. This is where a cassette would be a distinct advantage, allowing you to connect the pintels and gudgeons before the rudder blade is set into the water. In this photo and the one following you can see the vertical aluminum square tube has been filed with wood. This both stiffens the extrusion and allows the tightening of bolts with out causing the extrusion to bend out of column.

The parts of the system are clearly labeled to aid in the installation of the system. Typically a rudder breaks after dark and in big waves.

The control lines lead forward from the rudder to snatch blocks on each rail, and then into a disk mounted onto the steering wheel! As long as the steering wheel is not disabled, you would be able to steer from the regular steering station.

Notice that it is the starboard control line which wraps around the disk multiple times, and then comes off to join the port side control line. This means no knots on the disk, and it makes it relatively simple to "tighten the steering " using the knot on the port side of the cockpit.