question about rudder

[Bob McGovern]

Hi Mark,
IIRC, there are two bolts going through the bottom "shoe" to slide it off the shaft. The "shoe" contains the bottom bushing. There are also bushings at the hull bottom and at the top where the tiller is attached. Then it's just a matter of removing the tiller fitting on the rudder head and the whole thing should slide down and out the bottom. If you do it with the boat in the water make sure you tie a rope to it.
On my Ballad, when I reinstalled the rudder, all three bushings did not line up perfectly, so I had to persuade the top end of the shaft over a bit to go through the top one .. not a problem. Also, if you are on the hard you might have to dig a hole under the bottom of the rudder to be able to get it down all the way.
I'll dig out some pictures tonight.

Pretty deep hole, too.

[prjacobs]

All I can find is a few "before" pictures, but they may be of help.
I got this one off the WWW. It shows the whole thing.


This is a shot of the skeg base with the "shoe" removed.


This is a shot of the upper part of the skeg, showing the location of the middle bushing.


Here is a shot of the rudder removed.


The shoe is a pretty crude looking piece of kit, but it's strong and does the job: just a short piece of SS tubing to hold the bushing, with two vertical "ears" welded to it that sandwich the end of the skeg, and three bolt holes which are threaded on one side so no nuts are needed.

Hope this helps!

[MarkRyan1981]

Thanks chaps, that's awesomely helpful.