{"id":44613,"date":"2025-07-16T16:15:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T16:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/?p=44613"},"modified":"2025-07-16T16:15:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T16:15:21","slug":"survey-of-the-week-163","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/2025\/07\/survey-of-the-week-163\/","title":{"rendered":"Survey of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before reading on, please take a moment to fill out this week&#8217;s survey so we can share your knowledge and experiences with the Cruising Compass family. Thanks.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.surveymonkey.com\/r\/32BHMFX\">Have you had or do you plan to have you boat&#8217;s topsides painted?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on how you steered your boat without the rudder. Your solutions show just how resourceful cruising sailors can be.\u00a0 Quiter a few simply steered with their emergency tillers or with their windvanes\u2019 auxiliary rudders. But many had to be really creative.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Did not &#8220;have&#8221; to, but spent an afternoon sailing in moderate winds with the rudder lashed amidships on a sloop Tacking was a challenge involving backwinding the jib, but a well balanced boat can do most all else by picking the placement of your sails.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Steered with our Hydrovane windvane&#8217;s auxiliary rudder.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But lowering the bent rudder shaft by 2 inches and drilling the quadrant mounting bolts higher<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ketch rigged, was able to balance the rig and proceed to port<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Used the wind and forward and reverse to get over to an end tie.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It was actually a broken steering cable. We have a catamaran so I used both engines to control the direction to get us back to the dock.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sail trim and dragging warps<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>With no rudder on a Southerly 34R, we were unable to steer in 6\u2019 waves and 20+ kts of wind. We called the USCG before being blown ashore in NJ.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By focusing on main and Genoa trim which is a constant struggle with seas. We managed to sail 280 miles and finish the Bermuda race.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Portion of floorboard lashed\/riveted to spinnaker pole.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Only for a couple of hours when rudder linkage became disconnected in lumpy tidal waters then was repaired. Reefed main to ease steering and used the wind vane steering gear&#8217;s semi balanced rudder to hand steer and continue on passage. This was the original Windpilot, a simpler version of the Hydrovane.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>towing a large warp of line to create drag, and shifting it from side to side<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I managed to steer with the emmergency tiller but only under power. The short tiller (to clear the wheel pedestal) didn&#8217;t have enough leverage to steer under sail.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Bigger boat \u2026 had two engines. Leveraged the engines RPMs to steer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Bigger boat \u2026 had two engines. Leveraged the engines RPMs to steer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Outboard rudder. Tiller accessed the rudder through the transom. Lost the rudder. Used long oar through the aperture.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hardly noticed. I spent many days trying to figure out why the auto pilot was making an S track. Finally discovered one rudder blade was missing. Cats can be sailed almost normally with just one&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Was able to lash a paddle to the remaining rudder section. Not a good option but it got us home!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before reading on, please take a moment to fill out this week&#8217;s survey so we can share your knowledge and experiences with the Cruising Compass family. Thanks. &nbsp; Have you had or do you plan to have you boat&#8217;s topsides painted? &nbsp; &nbsp; Many thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on how you steered your boat without the rudder. Your solutions show just how resourceful cruising sailors can be.\u00a0 Quiter a few simply steered with their emergency tillers or with their windvanes\u2019 auxiliary rudders. But many had to be really creative. &nbsp; Did not &#8220;have&#8221; to, but spent an afternoon sailing in moderate winds with the rudder lashed amidships on a sloop Tacking was a challenge involving backwinding the jib, but a well balanced boat can do most all else by picking the placement of your sails. &nbsp; Steered with our Hydrovane windvane&#8217;s auxiliary rudder. &nbsp; But lowering the bent rudder shaft by 2 inches and drilling the quadrant mounting bolts higher &nbsp; Ketch rigged, was able to balance the rig and proceed to port &nbsp; Used the wind and forward and reverse to get over to an end tie. &nbsp; It was actually a broken steering &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44616,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44613\/revisions\/44616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}