lower pin either fell out or they hit something and it was broken off the load would have been transferred to the spot on the shaft that had been heat worked during the previous repairs. The extra load on the shaft without the benefit of the lower gudgeon would have snapped the shaft and the rudder fell away. Many rears ago I helped a friend pull his boat off of a reef. Along with the hull and keel damage the rudder was pounded up and out of the lower gudgeon and bent off to the side about 30 degrees. It was what I would call a semi stone age situation to be in as the repair facilities were almost non existent. In order to get someplace where we could repair the boat we had to "do what we had to do". We had the boat anchored with the leaks stopped so we were no longer in danger of sinking but we had no way to steer the boat with a reef to pass through and a couple of hundred miles to sail to a yard. We decided on a course of action because it was the only course open to us. We began by diving under the boat and making some rough measurements, removing the lower gudgeon, sliding the rudder down out, floating it to shore where 5 or 6 kids would pick it up and carry it to what amounted to the town machine shop/boatyard. I built a jig using the rail road ties that were holding up an old fishing boat. I used 2x4's to hold the shaft in position and put a dot on the hull of the boat above the rudder and another dot on the keel off to the side. By measuring to the two dots I could figure out haw much of a bend I wanted to make. We would remove the rudder and the kids would heat the rudder shaft with a cutting torch and make the bend. We would then reinstall it back into the jig and measure again. If I thought it was good we would take it back out to the boat. If not, we would re-heat the shaft and try again. Once it was back out at the boat I would dive back down with it, slide it back up into the hole and attempt to reinstall the gudgeon. We did this 5 or six times before we were able to get the shaft straight enough so that the wheel would spin. That kind of heating of the shaft had to do major damage to the metal and I told my friend that he should sail it back to the US and have the rudder shaft replaced. Instead, he sailed it back to Denmark. I wonder if the repairs were of the same quality?