Bought the boat earlier in 2004, now laid up ashore due to an imminent cataract operation.
Brought rudder home to remove antifouling etc, and discovered serious cracking hidden by the lower pintle bracket.

COMPLETE RUDDER FAILURE WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME.

Suggest all owners of FIXED KEEL John Baker 26's get their rudders examined. These cracks were not visible with the rudder in position.

Frank Marsden
Frank Marsden

To late for me. My blade on my lifting keel supeseal gave way just outside hurst narrows in the North Channel on saturday morning. Not the best place to be in a South Westerly. We managed to motor out to windward to get in a safer position and then Yarmouth Lifeboat came and towed us in. Yarmouth's a lovely place, but the boat should be on its mooring in Poole. So if anybody has any advice of where to get a new blade or one I can borrow just to get her back to Poole I be eternally grateful.

Paul
Paul Morris

Paul

I have a spare rudder blade for a superseal 26. It is not the standard shape, but not far off. It will get you home to Poole. I had a similar problem and contacted Bill Parker at Parker Yachts. He sorted out a new blade for me. Get in contact and we'll sort something out.

Phil Walden Tiptoe Too (6/26)
Phil Walden

Hi Frank,
hope the operation when well.
Any chance you could post a photograph of your rudder highlighting the area of damage.
Donal Gleeson

As a matter of information: of the three Super Seals here in Dubai (All fixed keels)
One suffered a rudder failure earlier this season, Just below the lower pintle. The blade just folded and gave way when under sail.
The other has just had a replacement made to prevent a similar occurrence.
Our boat had a replacement rudder in 1998.
Must be worth a very close look
Don Philip

Don Philip

Don,

I have had a close look, and submitted a brief write up for the next newsletter.

My findings, specific to Superseal 26/84 1980 John Baker built:-

The rudder is constructed from two halves laid up in grp.
The two halves do not match, and filler has been applied externally to fair the mismatch; this was poorly bonded.
The joint all round the blade was filled with what appears to be car body filler.
The interior has a (two??)steel reinforcments and has a high density filler, which is porous.
The rudder is extremely heavy.

Two "U" shaped s/s brackets were bolted to the rear of the stock indicating that the joint had opened.

The view of the surveyor was that this appeared to be an adequate repair

I discovered cracks after removing the pintle fittings and the antifouling.

THEY WOULD NOT BE VISIBLE EVEN TO CLOSE INSPECTION WITH THE RUDDER MOUNTED.

On stsrting to repair, i.e. grind out the laminate to remove the cracks it seems that the laminate in the area of the pintles is resin rich i.e. not enough glass.
The glass was only chopped strand mat.
As any rudder is subject to bending loads I would have expected a laminate with alternate layers of chopped/woven rovings or even unidirectional.
Woven rovings 2 times strength unidirectional 4 times.

At this point I decided to cut core samples with a hole drill further down the blade.
This yielded a saturated core and some not-fully-wetted out grp.

At this point I decided that the rudder was scrap, and that all Superseal fixed rudders were suspect and should be examined immediately

Subsequently I have removed more of the filler round the steel reinforcment, which is drilled for the pintle bracket front bolt, and the steel is also cracked.

I am begining to think that the problem is caused more by the weight of the rudder rather than the steering loads.

Frank Marsden
Frank Marsden