Ida Sailor Foiled Flp Up Rudder

[Gil Weiss]

I am a big believer in the Ida Sailor foiled rudders. I now need to buy one for my CP19. Although a bit pricey, they know have a complete assembly featuring a flip up blade which does have advantages.

Anyone have any experience with this complete unit?

Also, does anyone out there in ComPac land use the delrin breakable bolt they sell which allows the blade to flip up in case an object is hit?

Thanks, Gil

[Salty19]

Hi Gil,

I bought the Flip up rudder assembly for my C16.    Initially I was going to go with the standard rudder only arrangement.  However, I decided to go with the full assembly for two reasons:

1.) My tiller was looking fairly shabby (some wood degradation) and the complete kit came with a new one.  I ended up ordering a slightly (2") shorter tiller as well (long arms).

2.) I sail in shallow water and have had to manually push and relock the stock rudder down after hitting ground with the rudder.    I just purchased the boat in June and that problem had reared itself multiple times. This caused a lack of steerage until the rudder was pushed back down and locked. 

The flip up assembly forces, via the hydraulic dampener, the rudder back to full down fairly quickly after having been moved upward by an object. It takes about 1 second for the assembly to push the rudder to full down from the horizontal mid point.  Most of this time is fighting the water tension.  Out of water, it moves with enough force and speed to hurt yourself or damage the boat. The hydraulics are fairly strong.

I also liked the ability to fully raise the rudder in a vertical manner.  This made clearance in my garage a little more manageable (can crawl underneath no problem and doesn't hit things on the floor behind the boat) and provided for a bit of mental assurance that the rudder was not sticking out the back quite so far, making shallow launches or backing up a little easier, or at least more assuring.  However, this was not really a purchase decision factor but rather an extra benefit. 

3.) You just pull on the cord to raise or lower the rudder assembly. No reaching over the transom to fiddle with the rudder or locking arm/nut.  My back is not in great shape, and the lack of bending/twisting to lower, raise, and lock the rudder is a welcome change. 

There is one thing I do not like about it.  The new arrangement places the tiller at a fairly high attitude in relation to seat height.  It put the fore end of the tiller at *about* 3 inches higher than standard.  That's a guess. It felt really high to me, and I'm tall with long arms and legs. This caused some degree of  discomfort as you have to hold your hand higher than is necessary and from what your likely used to.  I simply used an air powered cutoff wheel and trimmed a small amount of metal off the tang that attached the tiller to the assembly. This tang rests on a tab welded to the assembly. The relationship of the tang and tab sets the tiller height.   By cutting off about 3-4mm of the bracket, this lowered the tiller back to where I like it-close to standard. Warning:  The metal tab area I'm speaking of must be made of hardened steel as it took considerable effort to trim it down even with the aforementioned air powered 5" cut off wheel.  A hacksaw or dremel just is not the right tool to use here unless you like to punish yourself!   

Another option would have been to drill out the aft end tiller mount hole, tilt the tiller down, and fill in the upper gap of the now enlarged hole with epoxy or similar.    Or just ask IDA to NOT drill the aft tiller hole so you can place that hole in the correct orientation once eyeballing the tiller angle/height.  That's the way I would have done it if I knew the tiller would be too high.

Overall---I would buy this again and ask to not drill out the aft tiller mount hole.  Obviously the performance and steerageway benefits have nothing to do with the Flip up feature.  Indeed, the rudder benefit was felt immediately. 

If any of this doesn't make sense, just let me know.

[Salty19]

Gil-

I apologize, I neglected to mention something...you do have to drill out the gudgeon holes to accomodate the larger pintles of the kick up assembly.  This essentially means you're never going back to the standard issue assembly unless you can find appropriate spacers.  This was not an issue for me.   Unfortunately I do not know what size hole to drill.  My drill bits are not labeled--I simply drilled out the holes with a slightly larger bit until the assembly fit without binding. I did not use a long drill bit, but I did use a very heavy duty drill and paid close attention to drill angles.  It worked out fine.