A $10 fix to prevent another $1,000 mistake

[LordElsinore]

I have to do some reconstructive surgery on my rudder. It has some ramp/road rash from the PO. Seeing your CB repairs inspires me to fix mine. Mine is really fairly minor, but it's ugly and bothering me. I think I might just cut it off parallel to the waterline and glass the end shut. It would only shorten it by a few inches at most.

I repaired my daggerboard and rudders a few years ago. Documented it here, in case it helps or inspires:

viewtopic.php?t=28619

[OverEasy]

Hi Lord Elsinore!

Sorry about your midland marking misadventure but there’s gotta be a little kid in us somewhere that can appreciate leaving a multi mile long ’chalk mark’ down the middle of the lane for people to ponder…..

Nice solution!
On our Sea Lion trailer there’s a frame cross bar to catch our Mac26X swing keel.
Our concern has been that if the keel drops we jam up trying to launch and then if the boat twists we’d snap it!
If it drops down in transit with the road bounce we’d end up with a “V” notch on the leading edge about mid way down… that still wouldn’t be nice. So I added a stretched out HD bungee to catch the keel. It works well enough statically but I’m not convinced that it’s the best answer.

I have a project for 2025 to remove and replace all the old original trailer bunks as one broke free when we were last hauling out for the season. (Some paracord and old fashioned lashing set it back in place for the time being.) While we’re gonna be fussing about anyway I think I’ll leverage your experience and add a central “Keel Glide Path” that will run all the way to the end of the trailer such that it will also help lift the keel if one were to forget to haul up the keel when hauling out.

Thanks for sharing your misadventure….

Best Regards,
Over Easy

[LordElsinore]

A giant 6 foot+ box showed up at my door today from Blue Water Yachts (well, from their supplier). I ordered a new daggerboard from them like maybe 8 days ago and it showed up already even though they said it would take 6-8 weeks.

Excited for the snows to melt so I can get out there again...

[Jimmyt]

Wow! That’s excellent! Thankful for those guys every time I need something for my Mac.

That’s a great solution you engineered.

[LordElsinore]

For about 2 minutes I considered trying to make my own daggerboard.

I had been watching this guy, who is building is own ocean-crossing mini cruiser, and he built some rudders using a method from this website



Learning how to build rudders and daggerboards would be cool, but by the time it warms up enough here to do fiberglass etc, I'm afraid I'd lose half the season (at least) before having something to show for it.

He uses a different method to make another foil here:

[Jimmyt]

A dagger board would be a pretty good project. I like the way he did his rudders using the wood stringers with plywood bent over them. However, our rudders and dagger have to take on water, so that would necessitate water proofing the insides of whatever you built. It can be done, but something to think about.

[OverEasy]

Hi All!

It would seem that setting up and using a ‘hot wire’ foam cutter to make an airfoil slightly offset smaller than the original then fiberglassing several layers over it would be the way to go for making rudders or a dagger board. As the dagger board needs to flood one could drill in two appropriate openings then use acetone to dissolve the interior foam to make it hollow for flooding. One could also add any reinforcement stringers or holed ribs and or reinforcements as desired.

I’ve contemplated that if we were to ever lose our swing keel on our Mac26X that this could be our option. I’ve planned already to trace an outline of swing keel and thickness dimensions next time I drop the keel out to check on the pivot assembly. Probably the next time we bottom paint in a year or two.

Best Regards,
Over Easy

[LordElsinore]

Now that it's summer, I finally opened the the box containing my new daggerboard. Got it installed and I'm back in business!

Figured I'd share a picture of what it looked like in the box. I feel like they did a great job packaging it


The leading and trailing edges weren't quite as smooth as my original one. It probably could have used a little more smoothing there. But it was good enough to get me in the water again.

[Russ]

Nice packing.

I hit a cable and it took a chunk out of my daggerboard. Probably fixable. But it's nice to know we can still get a replacement for a device that is built to be sacrificial.