The rudders on these boats were designed to "fail safe" and shear just below the partial skeg if they hit something. The intent was you are left with a stub in the event of a failure that you can steer by just enough to get somewhere. This was by design and it appears it worked....

This is the first time I have seen or heard of one fail on a 36T and I am very active in the CS group. It appears it did just as the designer intended. Ray Wall had been the chief designer at Camper Nicholson before drawing the 36T and fro what I was told he drew this fail safe design onto some of those boats as well. My guess is the re-built rudder was not done properly especially considering this is the first rudder failure I know of out of many hundreds of hulls built over a 14 year span.. Our boat, same as the one that lost the rudder, has been around the world and the rudder is still the stock rudder that she shipped from the factory with in 1979...

They claimed to have hit something and noted some gouges in the keel IIRC.... If I am going to hit something with my rudder I would rather have it fail safely and leave me with at least something than nothing or a gaping hole...I know know the design can work and it gives me a little more piece of mind. That said she's already been around the world without me and came back like she'd never left the dock..