Last weekend we had in-laws visiting, so I played the good host by disappearing into the garage as often as possible. Many things became affixed to the boat.
One of those was the rudder. It was tricky. First I attached the pintles -- sort of like hinge pins on brackets -- to the rudderhead, which is painted a lovely creamy color (Hatteras Off-White) to match the hull. This was challenging because I had to drill straight holes through two layers of stuff. Ideally, a drill press would have appeared in the garage so I could be sure of doing this properly. Alas, the drill press fairy has had cutbacks due to the recession, which ended a year ago but failed to notify the fairy.
After I got those pintles on the rudderhead, more-or-less straight, I had to hold the rudderhead up to the aft transom and mark the gudgeon locations onto the transom. The gudgeons are like the other part of the hinge -- receivers for the hinge pins, again attache to brackets.
This operation requires 10 hands, all of them with some level of dexterity, leaving me 10 short. So I followed the example of someone else's build -- I think a fellow named Erik who kept a build-journal on the Passagemaker Dinghy Builders forum -- and used masking tape to hold the entire assembly on the transom. Made sure everything lined up ... adjusted things a bit ... made sure again ... then gouged marks on the transom by poking a screw through the masking tape covering the holes in the gudgeon brackets.
Then I took everything off, drilled some pilot holes -- despite the alleged self-tapping nature of the screws provided -- and then screwed the gudgeons onto the transom. Finally, holding my breath, I inserted the pintle pins into the gudgeons and ... it all seemed to fit, generally.
The only flaw is that I mounted the entire assembly just a tad too high. I think it will not affect the boat's usage or performance, but it means I won't be able to fit the rudder keeper above the top gudgeon -- I'll have to put it above the bottom gudgeon, which will be a longer reach should I ever want to remove the rudder while I'm in the boat. But I'm thinking that won't happen much.
What's the rudder keeper? Stay tuned. Prepare to be amazed.
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