1400 Miles Without a Rudder

by Nancy Knudsen on 31 Dec 2006 Guenter Scholz looks relaxed. Lounging on the bow of his boat today with his lovely wife Ute, he doesn’t look triumphant, but he should. He has just sailed 1400 nautical miles in mostly four metre seas with mostly 35 knots of wind, and without a rudder. His story is not only inspirational, but all sailors who set out to cross oceans can benefit from the knowledge he gained during those 1400 miles.

Guenter sailed as a child on dams near land-locked Heidleberg in Germany. Later, after a successful business career gave him the opportunity, he started to sail the Mediterranean. First he took sailing lessons and chartered boats for holidays, finally buying his own boat, Y Not, a Contest 48, in 2001. In this boat he and his wife Ute did their first ARC(Atlantic Rally for Cruisers), finally sailing the boat back to the Mediterranean at the end of the season. Lots of experience, you would say.

But nothing prepared him for the incident which deprived Y Not of steering when half-way across the Atlantic this year, in his second ARC.

‘For this crossing I was sailing with a crew of four – a First Mate, two crew and myself, as Ute had decided to fly to St Lucia. The winds were certainly high and the seas about four metres, but everything was normal on the day that the incident happened. Then we took a few big waves from the rear, and the boat did a Chinese gybe. We reefed the sails quickly and I called for the helmsman to put the boat into the wind.’

Guenter now smiles at the memory. ‘I kept calling to put the boat into the wind, and at first I thought ‘Crazy crew what’s the matter – get the boat into the wind!’

‘Then we realised there was something drastically wrong. I think the waves had turned the boat and there was so much pressure that the rudder or some part of the rudder, snapped. One thing is sure – we did not hit anything in the water – not a whale, not a container.’

They immediately sent a PAN PAN to Falmouth, and emailed the ARC organisation.

‘By now it was almost evening, and more than anything I needed to think. So I sent my crew to bed, with the idea that we would decide what to do in the morning. All that night we lay ahull in the big seas.’

By morning the ARC organisation had emailed all yachts in the vicinity and already replies were coming in. ‘This was good for our morale’ Guenter recalls.
‘Two boats arrived on the scene – British yachts Irie and Om Shanti – and they offered to stand by, while we tried to work out what to do.’

Overnight, Guenter had worked out a series of plans, which they put into operation with all haste.

Plan No. 1: Control the boat with drogues. So they set about making a drogue with lines and buckets, and rigged up a slip line across the stern of the boat. The idea was that to turn to starboard, the drogue was slipped to the starboard side, thus slowing that side of the boat, and to turn to port, the drogue was slipped to the port side.

‘It worked in a kind of a way,’ recalls Guenter, ‘but it was far too slow to perform well in the high seas.’ This was disheartening, as the crew had worked for half a day to prepare this solution. Then, while the two yachts stood by, they embarked on the next plan.

Plan No. 2: This time Guenter reverted to the traditional method that is taught in sailing schools across the world. They used the spinnaker pole as the basis for a jury-rigged rudder. On board they had a stitch saw and drill, and inside the saloon they ripped up the ply board from the benches to make a blade for the rudder. To make the blade stronger they used cable benders to lock two blades together – then they locked all in place with large sized hose fittings. To control the new rudder, they tied the contraption to the backstay, and then ropes to the blades, which went to the starboard and port winches.

On the morning of the second day, they were ready to try their new contraption.
‘Well, it worked, more or less, and we thanked the other boats, and as they could do no more, they went their ways.

‘However, this solution was never going to take us 1400 miles across an ocean in those conditions. Maybe if we had been in a millpond, maybe then it would have been a good idea. However, our boat’s displacement weight is 18 tons, we have a long keel and we still had high winds and four metre seas. The flimsy structure, with all our good intentions, was just not strong enough.’

There was another complication. Earlier in the journey, a mistake with water had lost them 250litre of their precious water. On a normal journey time, they still had enough water. However, with an unknown time ahead of them, water started to become an issue.

‘This was, maybe, our lowest moment. The other boats had gone now, and we had worked hard on two solutions, neither of which had been effective. My crew was excellent – they asked many questions, but no-one was hysterical. However at that point I think we were all wondering what was to become of us.’

On the third day, still 1400 miles from land, they started to play with the sails, and made some old fashioned discoveries, first hand.

‘This third attempt turned out to be successful. Basically, we gradually developed three solutions, for different wind strengths:

‘For high wind – say 35 knots - we used the staysail sheeted in hard. And the headsail poled out on the other side. The staysail would act like a mainsail and tend to turn the boat towards the wind. The more we unfurled the headsail, the less the boat would turn to the wind, and if we unfurled it sufficiently, the boat would turn away from the wind.

‘When the wind was a little less, instead of the staysail we used the main with three reefs, and finally, when the wind was light, we could use the main with just two reefs. We were never able to use the main larger than this, as then we couldn’t balance or control the direction of the boat.

‘This was by far the best solution, and, as we had 1400 miles to go, the direction in the beginning was not so important. Broadly our rhumb line was in a south westerly direction, so if we made ‘southing’ today, we could make ‘westing’ tomorrow.’

However, gybing was still a challenge. Fortunately they had a bow thruster, but found that they simply couldn’t gybe the boat with the bow thruster alone. After some experimentation they solved this problem as well. First, they took in all the sails, then unfurled the staysail on the opposite side, then gave the boat a great push with the bow thruster before putting the sails up again as quickly as they could.

Now there was more good news. Again, owing to the efficiency of the ARC network, Norwegian boat Meadow came by with the offer of water. They spent a half-day experimenting with ways of transferring the water from Meadow to Y Not, with the result that they successfully received six of twenty canisters of water from the Norwegians.

‘The nicest part of that exercise,’ smiles Guenter, remembering, ‘was the fact that with the last canister of water they sent a bottle of champagne, and some CDs ‘for our entertainment’ and a small note of good wishes, all securely wrapped in plastic.’

‘With our newfound skills with the sails and the wonderful effect of the arrival of the gifts from Meadow, our morale now improved considerably. We had enough water, we knew how to make progress, we all believed that we would get to Saint Lucia successfully! Not only that, but we started to receive emails from many friends offering encouragement and good wishes, so the tide had turned for us completely.’

By the time that Y Not had travelled 1300 miles by controlling their sails, they had actually gained enough confidence to negotiate the narrow chann