I know we told you all it was just Mo and me crossing the Atlantic but I lied, we do in fact have a 3rd crew member. But before I tell you about that, I want to discuss rudders in general:
A big eye opener for me on this trip has been the number of problems crew have had with their rudders. Out of 16 boats taking part in the Islands Odyssey, 3 have had rudder issues and none of these boats are very old - perhaps 2-4 years at the most. All the problems are associated with the bearings and two of the boats are manufactured by the same large East German company. Many older traditionally built boats would have a skeg. A skeg is an extension of the hull designed to support the bottom of the rudder sporting a bearing at the top and a second bearing at the bottom - a very strong and stable arrangement. An added benefit of this arrangement is that the skeg gives some protection to the rudder if you were to hit something under water, a log perhaps. In contrast to this arrangement, the majority of modern boats have top hung rudders - there is no skeg. They still have two bearings but they are very close together within the hull. I am no mechanical engineer, but common sense tells me this is not a very strong arrangement and there must be huge forces on those bearings. The first boat to have problems was a catamaran in Tenerife. There being no lift out facilities in Tenerife, the skipper tried to replace the bearing whilst the boat was still in the water but was unable to remove the old one so he decided to leave anyway - not sure what progress he is making. The problems on both the other boats came to light on passage from Tenerife to Cape Verde. Again there are no lift out facilities in Mindelo but luck would have it there was a company specialising in rudder problems and the rudders were removed with the boats on the pontoon. These guys did a fantastic job, of course they don’t carry spare bearings for all boats and time to fly in a replacement would have taken too long so they manufactured new bearings from scratch! (Perhaps luck has nothing to do with it and the fact they have set up a company to specialise in rudder problems is indicative of the size of the problem). On Krabat we have a semi-skeg where the rudder is supported half way down the rudder - a good compromise I hope.
Of course the rudder is only one part of the steering system. The rudder is connected to the wheel often by a series of pulleys and cable. The cable is another potential source of failure but what I find amazing is that many modern boats have two wheels and possibly two rudders as well, an ideal opportunity to provide redundancy, but no, often a failure in a single cable will disable both wheels and rudders! Most manufacturers provide an emergency tiller to use should there be a problem with the wheel but these are difficult to control and would only be useful for a very short time. Krabat has a solid linkage between the wheel and rudder, hopefully less chance of a failure.
Which brings me on to auto-pilots: unless the boat is heavily crewed, hand steering any distance is unpractical especially if there is just two of you. The auto-pilot solves this problem steering the boat relentlessly mile after mile BUT what happens when there is a problem and the auto-pilot fails (which they quite often do)? If there is just two of you it means that you will have to take in in turns 24/7 - a very tall order. In fact after a few days of trying, people have become so fatigued that unless outside help is forthcoming it is likely they will have to abandon ship to the life raft. So where long passages are planned, as an absolute minimum, two completely independent auto-pilots should be fitted. However these are complex electronic devices and not only prone to failure in their own right but a lightning strike or battery failure, for example, could disable both units in a single stroke.
One of the boats mentioned above with the rudder problem has now got a problem with their auto-pilot (and no back up)! The rudder feedback sensor has failed (which the skipper believes was damaged when the work on the rudder was undertaken) meaning that the boat is swinging wildly from side to side. So they are hand steering during the day and using the auto-pilot at night but at reduced speeds. They have two children on board who take their turns at steering and the little boy loves it so perhaps, on this boat, not a complete disaster.
There is an alternative: Windvane steering. These devices are purely mechanical requiring no electronics or power and tend to be very reliable. They are mounted on the stern of the boat and consist of a small sail or windvane. Once setup, the windvane senses a change in relative wind direction and applies a corrective rudder action to bring the boat back on course - simple. Some designs apply the rudder correction using the boat’s own rudder but, in my opinion, the better design utilities an additional independant rudder. In addition to a regular auto-pilot, Krabat is equipped with the latter type. They are much more fiddly to set up and don’t keep such a close course as a standard auto-pilot but their advantages, in my opinion, certainly outweigh the disadvantages. Although we have used it previously for short passages it is only now after a very long passage we have finally become friends with the windvane steering system relieving us of this mundane relentless task. OUR THIRD CREW MEMBER! The other advantage of this crew member is that (s)he never answers back or needs feeding! Incidentally, our third crew member needs christening so if you can think of a suitable name please let us know.