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Having loaned my boat to a couple of friends for a week, I went to inspect this weekend, making sure everything was turned off etc. Imagine my surprise to find the rudder appears to be bent. The visible top edge is now at an angle of about 15 to 20 degrees from vertical. My problem is that I can't see if the whole rudder is bent, or just the top edge. The other problem is that there is no obvious way I can see to remove the swan neck to enable me to drop the rudder (with a rope through the hole at the top!) The hull is a 1989 Liverpool Boat Company trad stern. Is there a hidden bolt? Does the swan neck just fit on by friction? Any help would be most welcome. nb - The boat still steers, the tiller is now off centre to allow the boat to steer straight. The rudder has no more play than before the bending. Would it be worth waiting until the next time I have the hull blacked to get a good look?

So my boat had a little run in with a fallen tree chicane towards the bottom end of the Great Ouse - tip of the tiller got caught by an overhanging trunk as I swung the stern out, which meant quite a bit of force trying to yank the tiller clockwise with the rudder already pushed up against the hull as the boat tried to continue downstream. This didn't turn out as disastrously as it might have done, but my tiller and rudder now point in slightly different directions.? Rudder is perfectly straight, sits on the skeg as before (I've been in and checked!) and moves as before. Swan's neck and tiller arm is the original shape and at the base it still turns smoothly in its bearing. There's little or no play and it feels more or less the same, ignoring the not-insignificant detail that the rudder is now at 15-20 degrees to the tiller! I assume the actual problem is at some join between tiller/rudder stock/rudder post which isn't immediately visible (swan's neck doesn't appear to have simply rotated around the nut at the very top: I dislodged intact paint unscrewing it). Swan's neck won't come off easily so I assume I'll need the assistance of a boat yard, but hopefully the boat can stay in the water if the rudder itself is OK. - Anyone have any idea what the most likely location/nature of the problem actually is? Boat is a pretty standard narrowboat shell by Marque Narrowboats (if Mark himself can answer the question even better!) - Any boat yards on the Great Ouse you'd actually recommend for such work? It's cruiser country down here... but I can still navigate - Knowing the order of magnitude of damage I'm likely to do to my wallet and/or if the whole thing is likely to fall apart if I carry on moving the boat would also be useful, I guess And yes, I'm aware that I'm not supposed to use trees to stop my boat!