[Rhodes22-list] Sailing Backwards

[Roger Pihlaja]

Rummy,

You know all that elegant design work that went into giving the Rhodes 22
such a wonderful light feel on the tiller when moving forward?  It all goes
out the window when sailing backwards and the forces on the rudder blade are
reversed.  Unless you hang onto the tiller very tightly, the stick will be
ripped from your hands.  The rudder will slam over full lock in one
direction or the other.  If the impact doesn't break something, now the
hydrodynamic forces on the rudder blade are loading the gudgeons and pintles
on the transom in such a manner as to tear the rudder off the transom.  The
transom wasn't designed to be loaded in that manner and it's definitely not
a good situation.

The other bad thing that can happen is if you back into something with the
rudder blade.  The rudder blade can't kick up in reverse and again the
forces transmitted to the gudgeons and pintles will tend to rip the rudder
off the transom.  The same sort of thing can happen if the rudder blade is
slammed into the sea bottom in the trough of a wave while backing up.

There are times when sailing backwards is a handy skill to pull out of one's
bag of tricks, but, the maneuver is not without risk.  At the very least,
you need to hang on tight to the tiller and watch what you are backing up
onto.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium

----- Original Message -----
From: <R22RumRunner at aol.com>
To: <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 6:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Sailing Backwards


> Chris,
> How in the world can you lose the rudder? I'm not following what you mean
by
> that.
>
> Rummy
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>