The latest saga in “Project Creep: the Calypso Files” involves our rudder.

Like many other projects, this one starts with something only vaguely related. A wind vane. Well, I guess it’s more than just tangentially related, since the wind vane (a self-steering apparatus that uses the wind to steer the boat) attaches to the rudder to be able to steer.

We’ve had a Monitor for 30 years and it performed flawlessly, but it takes up a lot of room on the boomkin that we want for solar panels, plus the aesthetic isn’t quite what we’re after. So, because Jeremy doesn’t have enough to do on this refit, he's building a new vane. From scratch.

It’s a sweet project with all the hands-on neat building that has to happen, including building wooden models of the bronze pieces that will attach the backbone of the vane (a long bronze rod) to the rudder. These models have been sent off to a foundry where they’ll be used to cast the exact pieces we need.

Once he put the models into the mail, he took a long hard look at the rudder. Oops.

Yes, you guessed it. The rudder (made of mahogany) is warped. The new vane will need an aligned rudder to work its magic - plus, hello, a rudder that is straight might do a better job keeping us on track. Maybe we’ve just discovered why we seem to sail so much faster on one tack than the other?

Jeremy’s begun the strategic surgery on the behemoth, starting with trying to figure out the cause. He’ll do this by removing at least some of the skin to peek underneath (worried about moisture penetration, we epoxied on a layer of dynel cloth a while ago). Here’s hoping it isn’t fatal!