Noise from the rudders are not good…

Right now the forecast is for zero wind the next two days and then too much wind… So we’re doing some fixing work while waiting.

On the last leg there was some noise from the rudders, which is of course not very good to hear when you are on a long crossing. We did an assessment of what was going on while we were sailing and saw that it was not a big problem, the upper bearings were a bit loose but they could not get any looser than they were so it was nothing to be anxious of.

Today when fixing this I saw the cause of the problem. The yard had clear instructions never to mount any stainless bolts directly on aluminum, as the will cause corrosion. In this case they had put in plastic washers, but since the space was limited they had cut a bit off from them, and then used very small stainless washers on top. This caused excessive pressure on the plastic, which had gotten deformed and thus caused the bolts to loosen.

I guess I will have to put this on the list of things to check when building the next Journeyman…

Anyway, the plastic washers have now been replaced by anti-corrosion Teflon protective gel.