Rudder-less thinking...
Well, sorta kinda almost off topic.
Right after we acquired the O-34, I found out that the stock rudder was the same one as the 30' Olson 911S. I had emailed Carl Schumacher in the mid 90's to ask if I could get some information about the engineering and construction of my model of boat. He responded and said he could not help me because my model was *not* his design, but the rudder was from the 911s and "was used with (his) permission."
In about a nano second it became clear that Pacific Boats had upscaled his O-911S design (and looked hard at his equally-successful Express 34) and created their own in-house design Olson 34.
Ericson built all the Olson 34's except #1, and continued the O-911S in production, and used the same rudder on all, AFAIK.
Still wondering if this would be something that would need upgrading someday, I contacted the post-Ericson Yachts owner of the O-34 tooling, a small builder up in Port Townsend, and ask about the rudder. The guy on the phone assured me that the stock rudder was way too small and wanted to build me a deeper "better" one for $2800.
On our boat budget *that* was not gonna happen. I wandered over to Schooner Creek Boatworks here in river city and talked over my rudder-ish concerns with Steve Rander, who has Lord-only-knows how many thousand ocean racing miles behind him and 30 years of boat building experience. He told me to basically forget spending any money on a rudder change, for our particular model boat, and learn to trim the sails better when/if the steering loads up. Our rudder might, in theory, be a little undersize, but not much -- and we should not use rudder area to "make up" for improper trim...
This does not, at all, address the undersize rudder issue that Guy mentions, but I wonder if I am the only sailor that ponders about making just the right upgrade that will make ALL my sailing problems go away!
Yeah, it's probably just me...
A sunny Saturday to you all,
Loren in PDX