We've discussed this here before - how to get a boat home after losing a rudder. A couple interesting comments from highly experienced sailors are copied below from recent Scuttlebutts. Bill Tripp's comments make me wonder if you could go one step further, and use a staysail on one side paired with a partially-unrolled genoa on the other, and adjust both sails to help steer downwind.

Don Street:
Regarding the loss of rudder and abandoning ship that was reported in Scuttlebutt 3622, it was in the 1953 Fastnet Race, right after rounding Fastnet Rock, that the Dutch yacht Oliver van Noort lost her rudder. They secured the spinnaker pole across the boat, streamed a drogue on two lines rigged through the ends of the poles, and then to winches. To turn starboard, they would take in on the starboard line. Opposite to turn port.

They were able to sail Oliver from Fastnet rock back to Plymouth, only taking a tow to Mashords to dry out on the tide and have a new rudder built. Oliver was a 53-foot cutter Deveres Lentch designed and built, very similar to Stormy Weather.

Doug Petersen told me the system would work even on a modern short fin keeled boat. He was on a boat that lost its rudder half way to Hawaii. She was a fat beamy IOR boat. They streamed a drogue, rigged lines thru blocks secured to the rail cap at the greatest beam then to winches. They successfully sailed her to Hawaii.

In the light of the above two stories, why do sailors abandon boats as soon as they lose their rudders?

Bill Tripp:
Referring to Scuttlebutt 3632 and Don Street's comments about abandoning vs
steering with broken rudder, it is possible to sail a modern boat without a
rudder as well. I had the 'bonding' experience on a Jamaica Race recently.

We lost the rudder on a 60-foot sloop going across the Bahamas in a 25 knot
northerly, 60 miles north of Nassau. After spinning enough circles to focus
the mind, we settled on a drogue triangulated aft, no main, and a staysail.
The drogue kept the stern behind the bow, which was a decent starting
point, and we got the boat to dead run in 2 meter and short steep waves,
(surfing each briefly), steering the bow by the trim of the staysail. It
took a few hours to get the feel down, and then we ran downwind at 5 knots
managing to split the middle between the breakwaters into Nassau.
We called the Bahamian Coastguard for assistance into the harbor, but they
never showed (it was a Sunday) so we sailed in with a line to the bow of an
assisting local center console to make sure we didn't do a broach in the
inlet's breaking waves and land on the bricks.

While we started with the triangulating drogue to steer, the response in
the waves was too often out of phase, and we'd end up doing 90 degree
turns. With the staysail two people could steer the boat reliably down the
steep waves, flicking the staysail back and forth across the foretriangle,
eventually finding a 300 meter wide entrance from 60 miles, and 12 hours, out.