February 15, 2025

PT11-66

Saturday

The next and ultimately final step in the rudder saga was to install the gudgeons on the boat.  The book called for doing this later, after the hull was painted, and while that was fine, I saw no reason why I couldn’t and shouldn’t do the initial layout now, even though I couldn’t finalize the installation just yet.

I started with a vertical centerline drawn on the transom, using the skeg and center of the notch in the inwale as my guides.  Then, I installed the tiller in its spot at the top of the rudder case and clamped it in its fully-down position, protecting the clamping position with some scrap wood.  With a 1/2″ block on the inwale to space the tiller appropriately and determine the final height of the rudder case, I slid the gudgeons up onto the pintles and, holding the assembly against the stern, made pencil marks at the top edge of each gudgeon on the hull.  This gave me the reference points I needed to then strike lines perpendicular to the centerline at each mark; these lines represented the top edge of each gudgeon.

Because of the additional thickness of the outboard mounting block at the center of the inwale, the upper gudgeon required screws to install, rather than the supplied bolts, as the position fell comfortably within the reinforced section.  Had this not been in place, the upper gudgeon would have ended up just below the original inwale, and would have used short through-bolts to install.  I drilled pilotholes and dry-installed the upper gudgeon with four screws.

The lower gudgeon’s position meant that only the two inboard holes could be through-bolted, as the two outer holes would end up screwed into the edges of the aft seats.  For now, I drilled and installed only the two center fasteners, and would wait on doing the final two screws during final installation of the hardware once the hull was painted.

With both gudgeons dry-fit, I hung the rudder case to ensure things were properly aligned, then marked and dry-installed the final piece of the puzzle, the spring hold-down clamp just above the lower gudgeon.  This would prevent the rudder from moving upwards unless the clamp was compressed.

Finally, I mouned the rudder blade to check the appearance of the whole operation before removing the hardware for now. I’d mask over the bolt holes from inside to protect things while I painted the hull soon.

Total time billed on this job today: .75 hours