PDRacer #287 End Of Year Report
By Dave Sanborn #287 "Duck Soup" (2es 2eo 5ea 2ad 7ar)
Eventually, You Break Your Boat
I went for a final sail of 2012 on #287 "Duck Soup", December 23 at Stillhouse Hollow Lake in central Texas.
I might oughta stayed home.
Landing on a rough beach for lunch break, I broke the rudder head on a barely-submerged abandoned corrugated steel drain pipe.
I went ahead and ate lunch, then made a very weak and temporary repair using extra hardware and the multi-tool I always carry on the boat.
I was using the reefed chinese lug sail, perfectly balanced by adjusting the location of the leeboard to the forward-most hole in the hull. This allowed me to sail with very little load on the rudder, carefully making the 1.6 miles back to the boat ramp. I could have dropped the sail and rowed back, but that would have been much less fun, lacking any challenge or suspense.
I could have made a new rudder head from scratch, but I recovered the piece that broke off, so I just screwed-and-glued it all back together. Because some of the bolt holes were destroyed when the bolts were pulled through the wood, I added 3/4" washers under the bolt heads to spread the load.
5.4 miles for the day, 43.66 total miles for the year. 322.04 grand total miles since splash day February 2009.
Dave
