Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

It looks to me like someone

forgot to put the bolt in the rudder post. It would seem to me that if there was a hole to stick an allen wrench in then a bolt should have been installed by the factory. As far as the wave rushing over the stern and blowing the teak step off, did you notice that the step was only held on by 2 small screws per support post. Personally, I would rather have a boat that is over built then one that's under built. The fact that one rudder was bent and one spun on it post due to bad layup or welding leads me to think this boat was way under built. I know cats are suppose to be light but there is a limit. He didn't mention if it was water intrusion that shorted out the starter on the engine. Any boat can suffer that when water starts getting into places it shouldn't so you can't fault the crew for that one but you can question the manufacturer. The idea is to keep the water on the outside of the boat. It was either water or a loose wire connection at the starter. Both point at the builder. Not being able to get the generator to run might be a different story. When you cruise off shore you should be able to get thing going if there wasn't a catastrophic failure. It didn't appear from the article that it was a component failure. With no mention as to what the problem was, you have to assume that it was a factory screw up, yet again. Taking a boat that was two weeks in the water out into the Atlantic in the middle of the winter makes me think a class or two in critical decision making might have helped a bit as well. Just MHO.

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