EPO3 rudder question

I am contemplating upgrading from 20-yr old "racing rudders" to EPO3s for the primary reason that where i sail, depending on the tide, there are sandbars and the tips of the racing rudders seem to wear away surprisingly fast and split no matter how quick I am to unlock them. I try to be pretty careful with them but still get a lot of wear. And, for comparison, I'm not seeing the problem with the original EPOs on my H14 (not seeing much wear and no splitting).

For those of you with EPO3s, how are they holding up with beach use? Is there excessive wear at the tips?

While i understand that the nylon blades can take more of a beating, I'm more than willing to trade some extra love and care for increased performance and from what I've heard, the nylon ones would be a step down in performance.

Thanks,
Daniel

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H16 2002 "Islands" Sail No. 107432

Most of the people I’ve seen with EPO3 blades tend to treat them like they’re made of gold and try to avoid letting them touch the ground at all costs, let alone dragging them across sandbars.

If you’re really beating up your rudders, I’d just plan on re-puttying the tips every year with some marine tex. Or maybe reinforce the blade using a piece of G10 bonded to the tip or ginding out the leading edge and filling with thickened epoxy or a heavy tow of glass to provide some additional wear resistance.

Otherwise, I don’t think any composite blade is going to stand up well to repeated dragging over sandbars and I certainly wouldn’t test that out with an $1,100 pair of EPO3’s.

sm

Thanks SRM. You said pretty much what I was thinking. I’m not racing, so better to save the $$$ and not beat up a set of EPO3s. They sound like fantastic rudders though.

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H16 2002 "Islands" Sail No. 107432