Rudder Chaos

We have a working rudder!! Well, almost. There's a bunch of stuff to put back together but at least the rudder is where it's supposed to be instead of on the bow.

The anchorage was really calm in the morning so Ben was fired up to throw that sucker back in and called over to Dragonsbane. They were already on their way into town, but would be back in the afternoon. This turned out to be a good thing when Ben found more work to do on the rudder before putting it back in ("Of course there's more work. It's a boat," he says).

In addition to more work on the rudder we found the time to run pick up our propane tanks-yay for the ability to cook! Of course when I went to make cookies I found out that we're out of eggs. Anyone have a good substitute for eggs in recipes? I can usually fudge my way through a recipe with fewer eggs than it requires but have no idea what to do with no eggs at all. Luckily when Dragonsbane came over they brought me eggs.

Around 3:45 the rudder was at least back in the water, with blue webbing and red webbing wrapped around it to stabilize it side-to-side, two fenders strapped to the top since the top is heavier than the bottom and one anchor strapped over top of it to lend some weight to the whole thing. Adam was in the water with dive gear; Ben and Jacques were in separate dinghies holding onto it and trying to get it in from there; Arthur from the Black Pearl and I were in the boat holding onto the blue and red webbing.

After several failed attempts with that setup Jacques got IN the water and straddled the anchor to guide it while Adam was underwater playing with his BCD to either sink or float the rudder as necessary. Ben was in the boat guiding the rudder into the lower rudder tube where the new bearing is. We were trying our hardest not to get the rudder shaft partway in then having it lever and break the new bearing.

It was now about 4:45 or so, and sunset is around 5:15 so we were losing daylight fast. We had to time our attempts in between any boat traffic that made the boat rock, or worse, hobbyhorse the boat and slam the stern into the water. On one really close attempt we got the system down to almost a science--Jacques would yell "Red, tension! Blue, slack" while Ben was telling him "More towards you" so he could guide the rudder. The try after that we finally got the rudder in, but not all the way up. Arthur and I hauled on the webbing, Adam pushed from underneath, Jacques pushed from the water and Ben clamped a C-clamp on the very top and hauled from that and we were in business!
There's more work to be done as far as fiberglassing and putting the helm seat back together but as of right now, we have a rudder again!!

Here's some pictures of the chaos as well as one of my small contributions: putting together the upper bearing.