New Bern, NC

 A good part of the day was spent investigating the rudder.

Duane eventually just pulled the rudder off the boat with his hands! Theoretically the rudder would float so not sure it would actually have fallen off in the water.   Regardless, at some point very soon we were going to have a rudder that no longer provided steering.

Here you can see the shaft that holds the rudder - and you can see the remains of the weld that has failed.

 

 

And here Duane has cut into the rudder to see exactly what we're dealing with.  We have to order the foam and some other items to be able to re-work the rudder - plus we have to take the shaft to a machine shop to have the steel plate either re-welded or replaced.   (we could do this ourselves at home but we're 200 miles away from Duane's welder)   Then he'll get busy with the foam and fiberglass to rebuild the rudder.