Wiggy´s new rudder – feedback from a client:

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"Wiggy is an Elliott 770, designed by New Zealander Greg Elliott, but built by Holby yachts in the US, she is a development of the original NZ built boats with a 1.75 meter lifting daggerboard keel with 380Kg bulb. The US boats were envisaged to be a one design class, and came with a large roached multihull style mainsail, and relatively modest sized foresail, and sporting a fair sized asymmetric spinnaker on a retractable bow sprit.

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Wiggy a tricked out Elliott 770

She has a large cockpit, and a traditional daggerboard style removable blade rudder in a stainless steel frame with a long tiller that enable the helmsman to sit fairly well forward. The blade itself was relatively shallow, and had ‘toe out’ rake, as in then board was raked aft, of something like 5 degrees. This created excessive weather helm, and when heeled beyond 15 degrees made control a bit hit and miss. If sail trim was anything less than perfect, spinning out was something we encountered frequently.

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In discussions with Hans Genthe of Aeolos Composites, we hit upon the idea of utilizing a portion of the AP30’s rudder blade and placing that in a custom made carbon rudder cassette. We stuck with the same tiller length as the existing cassette, but chose to run with a much deeper rudder, which now matches the maximum 1.75 meter draft of the keel. We also opted to change the rake of the blade, moving that to straight up and down or 0 degrees of rake.

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The difference in control has proved to be incredible and the boat has been transformed. She is far more maneuverable and we enjoy complete control on all points of sail and heel. I would recommend this change to anyone looking to turbo charge their Elliott 770, and indeed would recommend this as an upgrade to anyone with a similar set up to that on the Elliott."

Paul Truscott, UAE