The Underwater KP44 Rudder Repair

The clunking rudder, which we had first begun to hear on the passage from Acapulco to San Christobal, had been weighing on my mind for some time.  I had read several stories of KP44 owners having had rudder problems and one case in particular of a rudder failure at sea between Fiji and Tahiti.  I didn’t want to risk being at sea with a broken rudder so I looked at our options.  The nearest boatyard and haul out facility where we could get a professional repair was inEcuador over 600 nm east. I could do the repairs myself in Puerto Ayora with the help of local workers. We could continue on our route until we got to someplace where we could haul out and hope that nothing would break before we got there. I decided that I would do the work in Puerto Ayora before we left.

At the internet café, I consulted the reports on the Peterson 44 owners’ website written by others who had done rudder work. My plan was to remove the prop, chip away the epoxy over the gudgeons, tie a sling around the rudder, remove the screws and bolts, remove the rudder quadrant, drop the rudder (plugging the hole with a wooden bung), float the rudder away using inflated fenders, and hoist it onto the dinghy using the outboard motor hoist. I’d then take the rudder ashore to cut it open and repair any broken parts inside.  That was pretty much how it went although it took quite a long while and six tanks of air to carry out the plan. 

It was fortunate that we had a Maxprop feathering prop since this meant that our propeller shaft was a little bit shorter than normal and so we would not have to pull the shaft out to remove the rudder.  I would have to remove the prop blades and hub in order to get enough clearance to drop the rudder but I could leave the shaft in place.  The rudder is held onto the boat at two points: the rudder shaft goes through the hull at the top of the rudder through a bearing and gland called the rudder packing gland.  A mostly watertight seal is created by rings of waxed flax compressed between the bronze rudder post tube and a screw-down collar. The second point of attachment is below the propeller aperture and consists of a gudgeon which clamps over a single pintle.  The gudgeon is comprised of two large, flat pieces of bronze that go on either side of the rudder skeg and have flanges at the aft end which meet to form a channel for the pintle. The gudgeon pieces are held together by five very large screws that go through the skeg and a ¾” bolt and nut which compress the pieces together just forward of the pintle.  The gudgeons are buried under a layer of fiberglass resin which must be removed.

Happily, we have dive gear and four air tanks on board Wheatstrong. I spent a couple of days underwater chipping away the epoxy to expose the gudgeons.  The size of the five screws then became apparent – the heads were a half-inch across with a 1/8^th inch slot – much too large for any screwdriver I had. It took some determined searching to find a hardware store in Puerto Ayora that stocked a big screwdriver.  After paying over $15 dollars for it, I still had to file the end down to make the bit wider. 

Another hour of unscrewing bolts and nuts enabled us to drop the rudder and raise it up onto the dinghy.  We took the rudder ashore and loaded it into the back of a truck/taxi and took it over to Jaime.  He has a shop at his house and agreed to open up the rudder, do the repairs, fill it, fair it, prime it, and paint it.  The cost would be $800 with materials provided by us.  We made a Sunday afternoon trip to the Bodega Blanca, a local hardware/marine supply store, where US educated family heir Jason, interrupting his afternoon siesta, opened up the store for us so we could buy epoxy resin, fiberglass mat, and micro-balloons. 

It took Jaime and his men a day to cut open a window in one side of the rudder.  Inside we found voids, moisture, open cell foam, wood scraps, and a perfectly intact stainless steel internal frame.  Whatever the clunking was, it was not due to any internal damage to the rudder.  Since we had already torn the rudder open, I took the opportunity to beef it up inside with some additional stainless steel bracing welded into place.  We cleaned out all the open cell foam, dried out the inside of the rudder using light bulbs, and filled it with epoxy and micro-balloons.  Several layers of glass mat and a lot of fairing and sanding, followed by primer and paint returned the rudder to like-new condition.

The rudder went back onto the boat much easier than it came off.  It was just a matter of tying the harness and fenders/floats back on and floating it into position under the rudder post tube then lifting it up using another long line run up through the aft hawse pipes and led to the primary winches.  The gudgeons went back on to the pintles as hoped and the rudder packing gland went back on smoothly.  The quadrant and steering cables reattached easily on top and, voila, we were back in the steering business.  The only problem was that the gudgeons needed to be covered up with epoxy, faired, primed and painted and the Maxprop had to be reassembled.  Obviously, the only way to get to the gudgeons for this kind of work would be with the hull out of the water. Additionally, the Maxprop was in about a dozen pieces in a plastic bag on the deck. I couldn't see how I would be able to put that back together by myself underwater. So we began to look for a way to get the boat out of the water - without having to careen her.

At Puerto Ayora, in the shallow inner harbour there is a drying rack.  To call the inner harbour a harbour at all is a bit of a misnomer. It would be more accurately described as a shallow, rock bound cove with barely enough room for dinghies to pass by the half dozen water taxis and small fishing boats moored across from two tiny dinghy docks.  The drying rack is a big concrete frame that stands on a mud flat; at low tide the rack is completely exposed but at high tide there is, hopefully, enough water so that you can drive you boat in, tie up to the rack and then wait for low tide when your boat will be left high and dry, leaning against the frame.  You can then work on the hull while the tide is out. The only problem is that the inner harbour is very shallow – too shallow for our six and half foot draft at all times except for the highest of high tides – which occur approximately once a month. According to the tide tables we would have enough water in the inner harbour at high-high tide in a couple of days to get to the drying rack – with maybe a couple of inches to spare.  We would then have to do the work and get out before the height of the high tides got too low for us to get out or risk being stranded on the drying rack for a month until the next high-high tide.  We wrote the necessary letter to the Port Captain requesting to use the drying rack and, in a day, duly received permission.  We waited a few more days while a battered old fishing boat overstayed his time on the rack watching the high water mark gradually decrease until it was finally our turn.

Without a prop on Wheatstrong we had to tow her to the drying rack through a very narrow, very shallow channel.  I got a local panga driver to help me and I got into our dinghy while Stephanie stayed on board Wheatstrong.  We pulled up the anchor 30 minutes before the high tide and began to tow the big boat in towards the narrow entrance to the inner harbour.  Things quickly got out of hand as the wind and current overpowered the little dinghies and their puny outboards.  Wheatstrong began to drift towards the rocky shore and just as the bottom got so shallow so as to allow the keel to touch we dropped the anchor and racked our brains for a solution to our quandary. It was now apparent that any attempt to get the boat into the drying rack would be foolhardy and dangerous so we abandoned that course. The problem now was how to get the boat out of the coral and rock infested shallows and back into the nice sandy anchorage. Fortunately, a concerned citizen in a power boat came to our aid; we threw him a line and he towed us back into the anchorage – after a few minutes we were back in the anchorage, but not to the same spot we had been in previously.

The next day I went underwater to reassemble the Maxprop.  I soon discovered that an important piece of the feathering prop was missing.  The inner hub gear, a bronze piece about the size of my ear, was gone.  I had thought the gear was part of the hub and so had left in place when I took all the other parts off; obviously, it had been held in place only by the prop’s thick waterproof grease.  The turning of the prop-shaft while the engine ran in neutral at anchor to charge batteries must have caused the inner hub gear to go spinning off somewhere into the water below. This was a calamity since there was absolutely no place within thousands of miles that would have this part.  Even having one shipped in from the US or Italy (where they are made) would take weeks, if one could even be found.  To make matters worse, the water below us now was not the water that had been below us before. I had no choice but to go diving at the site where we had been anchored before we tried to move the boat to the drying rack and look for the part.

I told Steph to go ashore and provision for our departure and took the dinghy over to the approximate place where we had been anchored.  I lined up, as best I could recall, the two boats we had anchored between and dropped the dinghy’s anchor.  Taking a mooring line with me, I went below and set up a search grid.  Using the line, I searched a 30 foot radius circular pattern around the dinghy anchor.  I swam the length of the line and then moved the line along the arc of the circle six feet then swam it again; and again, and again, all the way around the circle.  This turned up nothing, so I moved the anchor west 40 feet and searched again.  Still nothing and I was getting concerned about running low on air.  All the while, dinghies were passing back and forth through the anchorage a few feet above my head – the whine made by an outboard heard underwater is a scary, eerie noise.  I moved the anchor again and laid out the grid and began to search.  In desperation I began to stray a few feet further off the line and look around the sandy bottom for any hint of metal.  I had less than five minutes of air remaining when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that looked like a small rock sticking out of the bottom.  With my heart in my mouth I swam over and reached down to pull it from the sand.  It was the hub gear. I used up my remaining air whooping and yelping underwater.

Stephanie was incredulous when I returned to Wheatstrong with my prize.  She hadn’t gone provisioning – convinced that we would not be going anywhere. I fitted another tank onto my BCD and went back in to put the prop back together.  Through the liberal use of underwater grease and quite a bit of perseverance I managed to put the prop back together by myself, underwater.  I took the opportunity to adjust the prop pitch to better match it with the engine and transmission, something I had wanted to do for quite a while.  While I proved that assembling a feathering prop underwater can be done, I would not want to do it again and would not recommend it to others.  We went in to the store to pick up groceries and have dinner and a few beers to celebrate the completion of the rudder repair.