Rudder rubbing on hull when turning to port

There is no alignment adjustment on our boat ... just relies on Hanse building the boat right. There are two PTFE spacers of ~10mm thickness on the stock between blade and hull to keep keel low enough to avoid blade/hull contact. There is also an end-stop mechanism on the quadrant to prevent the rudder pivoting too far, be worth checking this is working properly.

If these look okay, maybe worth looking to see if there is another 415 on the hard you can look at. At most serious end of the scale, you may be looking at something like a bent stock. Is it possible the rudder could have impacted or snagged something? 

I don’t recall any impact, but there is some antifouling rubbed off on the lower part of the rudder (see picture). It doesn’t look severe enough for the kind of force I’d expect would be needed to bend the stock. It’s also on the port side, which seems inconsistent with the type of deformation that would cause rubbing on that same side. I would have expected an impact on the starboard side to result in rubbing on the port side. I’ll check it with a laser level to see if there is any indication of bending.

Your point about the stops is interesting—I actually didn’t check whether they are symmetric. It’s possible I simply have more travel to one side. I’ll verify that as well.

I was also wondering about the PTFE spacers. The clearance between my rudder and the hull seems very small even when centered. I’d be interested to know what the typical clearance is on other Hanses. As you noted, they all have very similar setups. If anyone knows the top-of-rudder–to–hull clearance on their boat, I would appreciate hearing it.

Talking to my wife here about clearance, recalling how easy (difficult) it is to get a scrapper in to remove growth etc during haulout, we are guessing there is something like 40-60mm of gap at the aft end, rudder centred. This is for a Hanse 445. We've looked through our extensive archive of photographs but none show this very well.