Last year I was sailing in the inner bay of Long Point in lake Erie where I have my boat. I went to tack and nothing. The boat would not change course at all. I lifted my rudders and discovered that I had soooo much salad on my rudders it was like steering with beach balls. Sailing in August when the weeds are at their worst, I had to lift my rudders every 20 minutes or so to clear them. I found that they were so hard to lift that I had to put a foot on the top of the motor to get enough leverage to get them to come up. Also like most I always lift them at dock as well. I was thinking of some way to get more leverage to make it easier to lift them and finally put my high school physics to work.
The attached pic's show what I came up with and they work like charm. I can now one arm them up with no problem.
I simply used 4 fairly solid L brackets, cut off some of one side and drilled a hole in the elbow of each of them to pass a bolt through and attach to the rudder as the fulcrum point. I did not want the bolts rubbing on the rudder's surface so I used some pex pipe as a buffer and spacers. Painted the whole thing with white rust paint and attached the lines.
Hope this is of help to others.
Scott
! Thanks!
