I'm glad you weighed in, Cordell, because I took the liberty of sending a pic of your shortened rudder to Tod, Mike and Shawn. I'll send it to Gilbert in a minute, too. I have Michael Bowden's pic of his older long balanced rudder, but it features the blade sitting by itself, not installed, so I also forwarded the pic of your rudder, to show how a balanced rudder would look in place. --Craig ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cordell Pool" <cordell@fluidyneengineering.com> To: "Montgomery_Boats@Mailman. Xmission. Com" <montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 12:49 PM Subject: Underslung Rudder Hello This is getting to the time of year that I really look forward to reading the mailing list messages. I have an older M-17 #305, which came with a long blade-type rudder. After a couple of years taking off and putting on the rudder or raising and lowering it too frequently, I built a shorter underhung rudder. The goal was to create a rudder that I wouldn't have to remove when trailering or raise or lower when coming into shore or shallow water. In order to get enough rudder area with a shallower rudder I built the rudder wider (sticking further out the back of the boat) than the original, kind of like a cat-boat. The rudder extends down into the water about 2-3" less than the bottom of the keel. That way the first thing to hit is the keel not the relatively fragile rudder. But, with the added width I didn't want too much resistance when turning the rudder, so I balanced the rudder by extending the ruder forward of the rotation axis under the skeg of the boat. Not a problem since I don't ever have to take the rudder off or raise it anymore. The new rudder is about 14" wide down to the skeg, and then sticks forward under the skeg about 8". This provides an easy turning rudder with good balance. This really helped the weather helm, and the boat sails itself much of the time. I haven't even thought about any rudder hassles since. Cordell Pool Bozeman MT M17 #305