[Faster]

With balanced spade rudders it's not unusual to have a significant "pull" one way or the other under power. It is in fact caused by the prop wash, and the way it is acting on the "balancing" tab - ie the area of the rudder ahead of the rudder stock.

The degree of this pull is affected by the balance area and the proximity of the prop to the rudder. It can be quite strong, esp if the rudder is on the verge of being over-balanced.

We discovered this first hand some years ago with my brother's Ranger 28. It had an unbalanced skeg rudder that had extremely heavy weather helm under sail and the boat was a broach machine. During a refit we cut off some of the skeg and added it to the leading edge of the rudder to create some balance forces. Unfortunately we overdid it a bit and, while that resulted in much improved rudder balance under sail, under power the pull on the tiller was excessive (previously there had been none). The balancing area we created was just a few square inches more than what the factory did in later models, but the effect was noticeable.

So this pull on the N33 may be "normal", it would be good to get some input from other actual owners.