I passed information to Joel Santarone, the manager of IdaSailor Marine. I thought he'd like to pitch into this conversation regarding his product. Below is his detailed response to the original message from the Santana sailor:
Tom, thanks for referencing the email from [EMAIL PROTECTED] below, I've not heard from him before. The Santana 23 blade that he is referring to did in fact break, we replaced it under "warranty". Here is what happened, however: We got a call from a Santana 23 customer about a broken rudder. Naturally we were concerned and immediately put a new one into production to replace it. Upon investigation, it turns out the caller didn't actually buy it from us, he bought it used from another owner in Canada who had sold his Santana 23, but kept his IdaSailor rudder so that he could resell it later (our rudders are somewhat coveted by the Santana 23 crowd and they are expensive) This is important for three reasons; First, the rudder appeared to have been severely grounded by the original owner, causing damage that turned into a classic notching failure upon post mortem inspection. Second, our lifetime warranty (which we are very proud of) applies to the original owner, not every single owner who will ever possess the rudder or the boat it steers, on and on into eternity. Finally, the rudder was not six months old, six months is how long the second owner had sailed with it before it broke. It did show evidence of UV damage as it was one of the very earliest Santana rudders we designed and built, before we started having our hdpe rudder sheet stock custom made for us by Polymer Industries. Our current hdpe product is all the highest grade virgin hdpe resin with a UV inhibitor added. It is made specifically and exclusively for IdaSailor Marine for use in building rudder blades. Here's the great part: I replaced this Santana 23 blade under warranty even when we didn't have to, including shipping, which cost IdaSailor several hundred dollars, yet the way the story is told below, IdaSailor builds inferior parts that break in heavy winds. No mention of a grounding that would have shattered the original fiberglass rudder, no mention of the above and beyond customer service we delivered by replacing it immediately when we didn't need to. I love it. Let me tell you about our rudder failures. We have a historic rudder failure rate of around .6% (6/1000 rudders) right now. You can break anything in heavy enough conditions and events can conspire to destroy whatever we could possibly build. Blocks, rigging, spinnaker poles, mast sections, lifelines, anything can fail. Sailing is an inherently dangerous sport during which things sometimes break. You should also know that in addition to our hdpe rudders, we build a lot of rudders out of carbon fiber/epoxy, solid mahogany, etc. and we've had a tremendously strong carbon fiber rudder destroyed by the shock loads experienced when a 30 foot sailboat is racing along while reaching under spinnaker and suddenly broaches at 16 knots. It happens. We enjoy a great reputation for building affordable high performance rudders. We also enjoy a great reputation for standing behind our product, but we can only get that reputation after things break. We have had products fail just like any other company that builds sailboat parts, we replace them immediately and cheerfully when it happens. We ask that the broken part be returned to us and we examine it carefully for engineering or material problems. We have changed a couple of our processes and designs as a result of things learned from broken parts. Now, specifically about the Montgomery 15 and 17 rudders, I would like to say this: They are very over-engineered. Period. The M15 and M17 do not weigh enough and are not fast enough to begin to approach the loads required to cause our rudder to fail in even very heavy weather conditions. This statement is not a hurricane challenge, of course, and it assumes that the rudder blade is fully down while sailing and that the rudder has not experienced severe or repeated severe groundings, etc. One other function of the heavy chord sectional thickness of the blade itself is that you will not observe measurable deflection of the blade tip while under sail even at significant angles of boat heel. If the boat weighed a lot more, or carried a lot more sail, or any number of factors that could load the blade to two or three times what is currently exhibited by the M15 and 17, you may see some deflection of the blade tip laterally and/or torsionally, but assuming water temperatures under 100 degrees F and speeds under 10 knots, it still would not be noticable to the helmsman (helmsperson?). Hopefully that will satisfy the engineers in your midst, although I doubt it. Thanks for indulging my ramble, please feel free to share the above message with the Montgomery discussion group. I've asked to join, but am still waiting for approval and it may be faster if you post it. Thanks again for the link, much appreciated. -Joel Joel Santarone General Manager IdaSailor Marine Inc. www.idasailor.com Tom Smith Next IT 509-242-0767 ext. 1035 _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
