We destroyed our rudder on the reef! Clever underwater repair | S2 Ep35

Welcome back to Sailing NV, where after an unfortunate incident where we hit some reef with our 3.5metre rudder and lost the sacrificial part on the bottom. Timo came up with an ingenious solution to protect the rest of rudder underwater and keep it altogether. Our rudder is made of PVC closed cell foam covered by carbon fibre, so without this solution, the two sides would have most likely opened up and delaminated from the foam due to the vibration from the motion when the boat is sailing. Due to our unusual choice of cruising boat, especially with it's 4.5m keel, it's tricky for us to find a haul out solution especially in more remote cruising areas, so an underwater solution was vital for us. This was such a cool solution from Timo, we want to show you in detail how he made it. We started the morning after the incident, by first inspecting the rudder damage, then Timo went down to cut off the broken part. Initially we mixed up some underwater 2 part epoxy putty, to seal the exposed part of the rudder to prevent too much water getting in there. With the bottom of the rudder sealed for now, next it was time to start thinking about how to make a more permanent underwater repair. Timo wanted to make a shoe to fit on the underneath, but first he needed to test what glue he could use to attach it underwater. We used epoxy in the end rather than the silicon as we felt the attachment would be stronger. The epoxy is more rigid, whereas the silicon more too flexible and over time would be more likely to losen. To make the shoe, Timo needed to cut off a skinny section of the bottom of the rudder, so as to be able copy the shape accurately For all these underwater jobs, we were very fortunate to have battery operated dive gear from blu3. You can find out more about our awesome battery operated dive gear from BLU3 in our previous video https://youtu.be/EeLkyscfIIQ?si=ViqggIBu2Dqk78B_ If you're interested in ordering one yourself, you can email sales@diveblu3.com and mention Sailing NV to get a free tshirt and maybe some extra discount (I can't remember haha). Thanks :) To prevent further damage, Timo also glued and clamped together the delaminated edges of the rudder. Finally we used ropes to keep the shoe attachment under pressure while it cured. This repair held up well for 2 years of cruising with no sign of weakness or reduction of performance. We have now finally made it to a boat yard in the north of Borneo, and will soon be showing how we are now repairing and re-extending the rudder out of the water. 00:00 - Intro 00:22 - Overview 02:22 - Inspecting the damage 02:40 - Cutting off the broken part 03:31 - Sealing the exposed parts 04:10 - Test silicon glue underwater 05:51 - Test epoxy filler underwater 08:15 - Cut off rudder slice 11:02 - Gluing delaminated rudder edges 11:56 - Making the shoe 14:04 - Gluing the shoe on underwater 17:20 - Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you'd like to support us on Patreon, our website https://www.patreon.com/SailingNV or with a one-off donation via https://ko-fi.com/sailingnv or paypal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/sailingnv or if you'd like to help us buy something we need, you can check out our amazon wish list https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1G2NJ0EGJLKR0?ref_=wl_share THANK YOU!!!