Friday Afternoon Special

Can you list the things you never want to see on a boat? A fire, perhaps? Windows shattering from lightning, water spewing from…anywhere? I can now add one more to my list: movement in the rudder post. On Day 3 of a five-day passage from Pensacola, Florida, to Cuba on our 1985 Niagara 35, my partner, Phillip, and I discovered our rudder post was moving athwartships—about a half-inch to port and starboard as the boat careened across the Gulf. Why? How? You might be asking. Because our boat was not adequately built up at this high-pressure point. Did we know this before we shoved off? Sort of. It turned out to be a combination of a poor design, some hidden sloppy work (a “Friday