We are now out of the yard with a working rudder. The real problem was a broken rudder tube not a dropped tube. Beneteau, I belive made a defective product. The tube was exposed and bare for the last 5 inches. The tube broke at the bearing and then wore down the remaining tube until the rudder had limited movement between two bolts that hold the rudder stop down.
The yard we were in was great. They improvised a tool to clean the old tube out of the boat so we could install the new one. The only problem was the new tube was thicker than the old one. (Maybe Beneteaue corrected the problem in later boats). The yard again improvised by turning the tube on a lathe.
We did take Murray Yatch's advise and epoxied the exposed part of the tube to the wood around the rudder post and built a cone of epoxy to the rudder bearing. The engineering on the rudder shaft was excellent as with the new tube and two new shims, there is not any up or down movement in the rudder.
The fix looks good so tomorrow we are off to Las Perlas Islands.
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