June 23-28, Minus June 25

We're insanely lucky that this anchorage is mostly calm, with a reef to break the surf/swell from the big blue water. This means that the rudder can potentially come out, get fixed, and go back in while we're still moored. Pulling the boat out of the water, or putting it on the hard, is wildly out of our budget. So Ben (otherwise known as MacGuyver reincarnate) decided to try and pull the rudder out while Kyanos is still in the water.

I don't have a lot of pictures of this, since I was watching and standing by to help as much as I could. Which isn't much given my upper body strength :( But I'm pro at handing him tools and cooking/cleaning for him.

The rudder came out of the water pretty well, and only weighed 50-60 pounds in the water. Not really difficult to handle while in the water. The real challenge came when we tried to get the rudder into the dinghy and onto the boat. It probably weighs 200-300 pounds out of the water. Ben found this out while he was standing in the dinghy with straps around the rudder and tried to lift the rudder into the dinghy.

I was on Kyanos trying to keep the rudder from scratching the side of the boat, stabilizing the dinghy as best I could holding onto the painter and asking "do you want me to get in the dinghy? Do you have it? Need help?"

Ben was fine getting most of the rudder partially in the dinghy but as soon as it came completely out of the water I jumped in the dinghy and together we barely hoisted it in. As for getting the rudder out of the dinghy and onto Kyanos, we called some friends for help.

Osprey came over and we rigged up a 4 to 1 setup using the boom. Problem with that was that the boom doesn't swing high enough, or all the way to the bow where we wanted the rudder. The guys got the rudder on deck then just carried it to the bow.

So now we have a rudder on the bow of the boat and a hole in the stern. The bilges can keep up with the water intake if we stuff the hole with foam. The extra weight on the bow helps to lift the stern a little bit higher, too, so the hole is maybe 5-6 inches above water. Unless a power boat rips by--then the wake puts the hole underwater.

With the rudder out we can inspect the bearing and figure out what we need. Progress! Maybe not forward progress but progress in some direction, at least.

Bad picture, but you can see water through that hole. That's not that great since I'm standing in the cockpit while taking the picture.

I admit, I did a lot of this (reading) while Ben pounded away at the rudder.

Old bearing.

Hole in boat. Scary.

Rudder on the bow. Not where it's supposed to be.