I have never lacked any confidence in our rudder construction. When I mentioned our rudder posts were "undersized", that was in relation to the discussions here, where 2" posts were said to be weaker than the forces our rudders see.

It is strange that upon looking at our boat, you come to the conclusion that the area and proportion of our rudders, their efficient position on the boat, as well as the overall hull shapes look good and more like a sailboat than a powerboat.

Strange, because there is absolutely no difference between those aspects of our boat and almost every single other catamaran made! Perhaps you are just now seeing for the first time what you have been talking about?

BTW, if you have seen the blog, then you know that our rudder position is about to get less efficient!

Our rudder stocks are 2". The one difference on our boat compared to other catamarans is that the manufacturer decided to extend the rudder tubes and lower bearings 1" outside the hull bottoms. The thought was that if the rudder post did bend, it wouldn't jam against the hull. The downside is that the foil loses its endplate and it is inefficient to have that space and potential turbulence. In the future, I think I may fill that in.

Our rudder stops are solidly bolted to a bulkhead and the quadrant part of the stop has a neoprene sleeve on it, but I don't expect that provides much cushioning in a slamming condition.

I thought I had posted information on Mantas with regard to the rudders earlier, but I now see that post somehow got cut off in mid post! So now it doesn't make much sense at all and ends in the middle of a sentence. In that post, I was presenting some statistics on lost rudders and rudder shafts. Within that, I mentioned that there have been 127 Mantas produced since 1995, they are located around the world after being taken on their own bottoms, several have circumnavigated, and we have personally been in conditions similar to the Alpha 42 more than once (as has Doublewide). No rudder post has ever been damaged on a Manta - this is not a guess, I actually know this (it is a small community that includes the designer and builder and we all know or know of each other).

So if 2" shafts are undersized, or even marginally sized, for these rudders, then it seems like one of the 254 shafts would have experienced damage over the past 18 years. In that lost post, I postulated that there were around 30,000 catamarans (35-60') sailing currently (I think this number is low, but a reasonable assumption). I also postulated that 50 of them had damaged their shafts (I know of 2, including this Alpha, and think that 50 is high, but a reasonable assumption). None of these boats have rudder shafts larger than 2". Maybe a couple do, but none larger than 2.5". The vast majority of them have rudder posts