Sailing Alone Across an Ocean on a 30ft Sailboat and Losing the Rudder 1000 Miles from Hawaii
Hello Friends,
This is the long format episode that chronicles my 32 day, 2300 nm passage from Los Angeles to Honolulu onboard my 1965 Alberg 30 sailboat SV TRITEIA.
1000 miles from Hawaii my rudder failed due to striking a submerged object (that was painted red). After failed attempts to secure the control lines to the rudder due to large seas and high winds I was forced to steer with a small “Sea Squid“ drogue for 18 days.
Triteia is equipped with a vintage Sailomat Aux Rudder wind vane which helped a great deal but was far undersized compared to the large rudder attached to Triteia’s full keel. The Windvane started to fail internally soon after the rudder failure. I was able to make a makeshift tiller handle that allowed me to turn the boat to get it back on course but the self steering started popping out of gear and stopped working completely while I crossed the channel between Molokai and Oahu forcing me to sit on the transom and hand steer for the last 6 hours of this intense passage.
If you w