Cal 39 MK III Rudder Tube Leaking

Here is the latest . . . due to being busy with life in general I've not had a lot of time to invest in working on or even looking at my boat but yesterday I was able to swing by the marina/yard where it is being worked on and take a pic which I've labeled and sent back to the yard. After Chris posted something about a leak he had, due to what appeared to be resin disintegrating I looked closer at my tube where it joins the hull and there is some damage or poor workmanship back there. It could be that the resin is weakening due to constant stress on that area under sail. Anyway, take a look at the pics and see what you think. You can see where they have reamed out the tube to make room for a delrin bushing also. Thanks - Paul West Adventure Kwest '80 Cal 39 MK III

It's not much more work to completely swap the tube out. I did it on my old boat by myself. Was my first "major" FRP job. (major = one where failure would be catastrophic) I called up Tides Marine in Florida and gave them the exact outside diameter of the rudder shaft and chose one of several basic profiles of bushing and had them custom machine a set out of UHMW polyurethane. They even had a chunk of 1/4 inch wall FRP tube of the correct length and diameter to replace mine onhand so I got that from them also. My bushings were Top hat shaped and slid inside the tube with the "brim" of the hat matching the OD of the tube. My tube passes all the way through the boat from Hull to Deck so I used a hole saw attached to a long piece of All-Thread with cylinders of stacked wooden donuts of the old hole diameter held in place by nuts and fender washers to "line-bore" the hole to the new tubes size. Glued it in real good with thickened West and then started making internal gussets of putty consistency thickened West. Got a small gusset so there wouldn't be air-space under the 4' strips of 23oz Triax fabric wrapped around the tube and out onto the hull in a "V" shape. Going around in different directions until I had a warm-fuzzy. Probably overbuilt it... Tried to cleave a granite boulder with my rudder in a race about 6 months later. Bent the shaft. Tube didn't look any different. From: "pw… [at] aol.com [Cal_Boats]" <Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com> To: Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2015 12:52 PM Subject: [Cal_Boats] Cal 39 MK III Rudder Tube Leaking Here is the latest . . . due to being busy with life in general I've not had a lot of time to invest in working on or even looking at my boat but yesterday I was able to swing by the marina/yard where it is being worked on and take a pic which I've labeled and sent back to the yard. After Chris posted something about a leak he had, due to what appeared to be resin disintegrating I looked closer at my tube where it joins the hull and there is some damage or poor workmanship back there. It could be that the resin is weakening due to constant stress on that area under sail. Anyway, take a look at the pics and see what you think. You can see where they have reamed out the tube to make room for a delrin bushing also. Thanks - Paul WestAdventure Kwest'80 Cal 39 MK III