Back in the water!!!

On last Thursday I received a call from Schooner Creek Boatworks, "Terry, your new rudder just walked in."  

I immediately replied, "Wow you guys are good, you can put legs on a rudder and have it walk around."

"No," they replied, "a guy in a brown suit was carrying it."

Eric over at Schooner creek assured me that I would be in the water by Friday afternoon.   He kept his promise, and the whole thing was under budget too.

I managed to get there in time to see her being test fitted and splashing into the water.

Here's the rudder being test fitted

Once the test fitting was done the rudder was hung and bolted on.  Here's a side and rear view of the rudder while still on the jacks.

Rear view of the rudder

Side view of the rudder

With the rudder hung, the tractor lift moved in and dropped her back into the river.

S/V NiSe making her splash back into the river

Hanging on with the new rudder

One last step was to mount the new flag halyard, which was done by a fellow Irish American....

New flag halyard installation

On Saturday we took her out under spinnaker, with about 6 knots of wind. The winds were out of the northwest, with a westerly current of 1.5 knots.  After the spinnaker when up my wife when down to take a nap in the cabin.  The new rudder was perfectly balanced.  Running against the current with a wind 15 degrees off to the starboard side of the transom, I lifted my hands off the wheel, and she sailed perfectly straight for 35 minutes before I had to jibe, running out of river on the Washington side of the Columbia.  No weather helm whatsoever.  

I noticed too the boat turned much easier than before so coming into the slip was so much easier.   Of all the things I have replaced on the boat, the new rudder by Rudder Craft certainly made the biggest performance improvement.