RTC problem

This is not about a specific hardware - I have a general problem.
Normaly I run ntpdate and ntpd - ntpdate sets the time on boot and
then ntpd takes over to keep it in sync.
What recently happend was that a server with a multiple years uptime
rebootet because of a power failure and the local ntp-server wasn't
up early enough, so ntpdate didn't set the clock.
ntpd didn't tune the clock either, because the offset was too big.
I know from debugging RTC support on arm, that the RTC only gets
written on explizit time setting with ntpdate, date and such.
But since ntpd only tunes the softclock and never sets the RTC it
allows the RTC to run completely unsyncronized.
Is there a way to regulary trigger a write to the RTC without
disturbing ntpd, so that the offset never gets large?
Of course I can configure ntpd to accept a large offset, but it seems
wrong to me that the RTC runs unsyncronized for a large time.

-- 
B.Walter <bernd_at_bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de
Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.