J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Rudder(s)

Bill,
I agree that balsa can easily be managed by isolation and I am isolating like crazy the hull of MaJic Carpet. I would however suspect that there are very few original balsa core rudders that are not saturated (even on the best maintained boats). Even without the impact mine suffered there were two other areas that were not isolated, the bolts for the straps were sealed over with what looked like 5200, but the holes themselves were not isolated. The other area that was letting water into the core was the hole for the tiller and I suspect that one gets by most owners. The hole for my tiller was wallowed out and the core was exposed. A few years of rain running down the tiller handle would have saturated the core too.

The rudder is like the area around the exhaust that gets directly exposed to sunlight. So when they are wet the internal temp of the core can and does go way up and starts cooking the wet balsa into a black stew.

I have one other rant issue I will get to one of these days, why the h..... did they screw through the inner skin in so many places? Where I can find and get to these screws I am removing them, sealing them up and putting a simple wood block in place to reattach the straps to.