Peter, The rudders are three years old and in Jim defence the broken one was also a second. The Mossie rudders Jim has been making have been fine and I don't know of any of Jim’s mossie rudders that have broken in this way. The problem faced by all boat builders and sailor alike is that light is fast and over building things makes them heavier. So we have a fine balance and in this case the thing that was out of balance is what we were doing, more sail area = more power = more speed = more pressure and the rudder gave up. This rudder is fixable but we chose to replace it instead. The new rudders have the stronger Taipan lay-up and that means my boat will be that bit heavier then my competitions so that puts me at a disadvantage (a couple of hundred grams). The other contributing factor was the inexperience of the crew with the Kite, our centreboards were down and we should have eased the sheets a little earlier, who knows we are still learning. The Kit will stay on my boat simply because it put a breath of fresh air into sailing a mossie for me. Is there going to be sailing at Summers on Boxing day? we are planning to turn up with two sloop rig boats.
