There I was enjoying a race yesterday in my Keel in a F5-6 with a total crew weight of about 33 stones when the bottom pintle sheared. The rudder lifted on the top pintle and sucked the safety ring into the gudgeon and jammed. Not sure yet how I am going to get it off. It looks like I am going to have to take the gudgeon off the boat and/or unbolt the pintle fitting from the rudder head.
Am I right in thinking there have been issues with the strength of the pintle fittings on the Stratos? The boat is only at the end of its second season and has been fairly lightly used. Maybe the combination of wind and weight was too much? I would welcome any thoughts.
While I am thinking about the back end, I have another question. I have fitted a 6 foot telescopic tiller extension for use when solo sailing/trapeezing. Is it legal to have and use it on the boat in regattas (in non-extension mode) when helm and crew are hiking conventionally?
I think there have been a few comments about pintle weakness - in particular this comment from Mike Beggs who certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to sailing
Take my advice, don't try and remove the pintle fitting from the rudder head as you will find, unless its very new, that the stainless steel allen bolts will have electrolytically corroded onto the aluminium of the rudder head and pintle fitting. I tried to do this recently and spent far too long with an impact driver and a hammer (very unnerving when its your wife wielding the hammer). You will be much better off removing the gudgeon from the boat I believe.
Not sure about the rules, so I will leave it to others to comment authoritatively, but I would intuitively thought that as its more or less a one-design boat (excluding the keel/centreboard variation) any modifications of this sort would not be allowed. As the tiller extension can be removed why not put the standard one on when racing?
Many thanks for your advice. In the event I was able to remove the pintle from the rudder head (evidently not quite corroded enough.)
You and others might like to know that Laser have been kind enough to replace the whole rudder head with the new style design which has a two-piece tiller and a single long pin which drops down through both gudgeons, so I was more than happy with their response.
Broken steering
Posted - 05 Oct 2008 : 10:19:55
