another newbie question

Yesterday was the 5th time I have taken out the 17' that I bought at the end of last year. I must say that with the advice I have received here from all of you helpful folks, I have finally learned to come about successfully and my sailing is improving, so THANK YOU to all who responded to my last post. The problem I'm having now is that for some reason I cannot get the leeward rudder to stay in the locked down position. It always wants to kick up slightly which makes the tiller tug and makes my hand sore and tired after a while. It doesn't matter which direction I am going, it seems to always be the leeward rudder that this happens to. I replaced the cam locks before I went out yesterday and before you suggest that I screwed those up, I paid close attention to how they were in there before I put the new ones in, so unless the previous owner put them in wrong, I did not. However I am going to investigate that in my owners manual to see if that is true or not. Given that they are in there correctly, what am I doing wrong??

There should be an audible click when you lock the rudders in the down position. If the rudder is still kicking up, there may be issues with the drilled holes in the rudder.

Sounds to me like the Cam Plate is misadjusted. You might take a gander at this link:

http://www.hobiecat.com/support/tech/rudders_cams.html

Brian C

is it that the rudder won't lock down, or they do lock but kick up real easy?

Make sure the cams aren't jammed. Sometimes when you put the rudders down they will jam and stay in the same position as when they are up, preventing the rudder from actually locking.

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Tiger 947/2364

I had the same problem with my rudders, and The Dog's/Brian's answer sounds like your problem. If the the cams are jammed they won't lock down at all. Be sure not to over-do the adjustment and make it difficult to raise the rudders.