Hi Armin,

I just realized that I haven't given you any feedback on the rudder and wanted to thank you for the great support and fast response. The rudder arrived on a Friday morning, I took it to a workshop with my friend that we could heat and use for a day. We put 4 layers of Gelshield 200 on and two layers of antifouling. We mounted the rudder Saturday afternoon and took off Saturday night. The channel was giving us all conditions for a proper test, starting with a night under engine, then the wind got stronger until I was going hard into the wind with second reef in main through the night. The rudder is very sensitive and gives a very direct feedback. If running under engine, it actually seems a bit too sensitive since the turbulence from the prop can be felt quite a bit, but that's not a big problem. The pressure is much less than with the old rudder (I guess the pressure point moved forward a bit), but one can still feel quite well how much pressure is actually on the blade.
In terms of exact performance increase I have not much data to compare and since I'm not into racing, this is not an issue for us, but it definitely feels more like a racing yacht now.

I crossed the Biscay in November under spinnaker, which ended at the Portuguese with 20+kn wind and an average boat speed of around 8kn, which is definitely quite impressive. But at those conditions, the boat is very sensitive which the autopilot can't handle. Even for me it was quite tough keeping the boat on track every now and then, but it was lots of fun!
https://youtu.be/iOpG8Ivvy5g

Now I'm stuck in south Portugal since December 28th, since a toggle of the lower shroud broke while I was on the way to Morocco. Waiting for a new mast, but this turns out to be a much bigger problem than a rudder. Anyway, the journey goes on. At some point I will actually start blogging at drivenByAutonomy.com, but first I have to sort out a couple of other issues.

Best wishes from Portimao,
Axel