Quest Nº 2: Drop the rudder so we can drop our keel

Our firs quest ended in a successful extraction of our old Volvo diesel engine, but it also made us realize that we are facing even bigger adventure than we thought, and in order to fix our dream boat properly we need to drop the keel.

The engine was removed so we could get a full overview of the damage that was causing our bilge to fill up with water every 6-8h.

As it often happens what we found gave us some answers but left us with even more questions.

We decided we needed to see the full extent of the damages and for that we needed more access. What we wanted to inspect further was the area underneath the keel-bolt backing plates and areas where the keel was touching the bilge box and the bottom of the boat.

Oishes' design is quite interesting and the bilge box actually extends from the boat into a cut out in the keel.

By then we knew that the repairs will take up some time and Oiyshs rudder had to be drooped so the boat could be rested on it's bottom. Without the keel the balance would be well non existent. We needed her stable and getting her lower would also make our life easier during the repairs.

Thus quest no 2 Drop the rudder so we can drop our keel.

This quest started with us digging a whole on a beautiful Sunday morning. We used some tools that were not exactly meant for the job (sticks,spatulas, screwdrivers etc ), but they worked, and we couldn't find a shovel anywhere.

As I mentioned it was Sunday and apparently a shovel is not something cruisers habitually carry on their boats so no option to buy and no option to borrow.

As usual corrosion the biggest fan of the salty environment made things a bit more challenging then they would otherwise be. We naively hoped that a thorough sweet water wash will do the trick and proceeded to try to figure out the next steps

Bartek quickly figured out the proper sequence of disassembly to make sure we drop the rudder in a controlled manner.

We thought that all we needed now was a couple of gentle knocks to get it to go but we quickly realized it is not going to be that easy

Team Oiysh 0 corrosion 1

It was time to take out the big guns aka PB blaster, if you ever used it you already know if you haven't just remember the name you might need it one day.

Happy as a clam we thought now it's gone go smooth but although PB blaster took care of the initial move the battle was not won yet.

A bit of explanation if you don't already know...

Corrosion on a boat is always a thing, with the humidity of the tropics it gets worse, and if you through salt water environment in the mix it becomes a constant battle.

It appears on all metals almost instantly steel gets rusty orange, bronze and copper get a greenish tint and even aluminum turns into white powder if not protected properly.

If on top of all that you add galvanic corrosion which happens when you put two dissimilar metals in contact with each other, well then you get to do a lot of banging and cursing.

In this particular case what we think was going on, was that the shaft was fitting the housing very snugly in the first place and after the aluminum housing oxidized the friction between the two parts became even bigger.

Eventually after around half hour of hammering it got loose enough that we could start the actual drop.

The housing was taken off and a line was attached to the rudder shaft. Next the line was put through a block attached to our boom to redirect at a nice angle to our mast where we would use a winch to drop the rudder slowly. How proper of us.

Fun fact for this quest turns out our rudder is made from high density epoxy foam and only foam. There are a few small patches of fiberglass where it was damaged previously and the shaft is stainless steel but is hallow inside.

What dose it all mean you ask ?

Well what it means it weighs close to nothing and the whole setup was a prime example of over engineering.

Turns out we could have just gone down, one of us could hold it while the other took the supporting blocks out. What can I say you live and you learn. On the other hand I guess if you are not sure it's better to over than under engineer something.

Final result non the less was that the rudder was dropped, achievement unlocked, and we could proceed to the next quest of dropping the keel itself and boy was that an adventure.