Thanks for the measurements, Tod. I would be removing 3" of the 12" chord (leading edge to trailing edge) at the top of the balanced section (about 25%), and about 2" of the 10" chord at the tip (about 20%). A fairly substantial amount of the below waterline area. I don't think I'll do it. It's too sweet of a rudder to mess it up. It's just going to take a lot of finish work to rebuild it, because of some warping caused by the moisture that got in. I think I'll see if Ida Sailor will build me a balanced kick-up rudder and keep this one stock. Larry On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:52:54 -0500 <htmills@bright.net> writes:
Larry,
I think Busca's submerged part of the rudder is very close to 11" longitudinally and 3' vertically.
I wouldn't worry about losing 2" (I think that was the figure) UNLESS you have some spare change laying around that you are dying to spend or UNLESS you are the sort who loves performance. There is probably a slight loss of performance but probably a lot of sailors wouldn't notice it.
The good thing is that the depth is the same. Loss of rudder area while maintaining depth has a smaller effect than if you had just trimmed that same amount of area off the bottom of the rudder.
I had trimmed quite a bit off the bottom of Busca's original rudder, maybe 9" or so, and the effect there was very noticeable (25% loss of area).
Tod
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