The good news is it APPEARS I MIGHT actually get out of here this season! The bucket list got a funding boost. Granted the largest part of that boost is going on things I have to get done before I can sign off of this town,, that do not become part of a boat or a sailing kitty, but are 'have to' none the less. This stuff I have been whittling down slow but sure for several years will now all get done in one fell swoop. Life does have it's good days.
So far this winter we found out the bottom needs to be completelyt reglassed over. Myabe I could get by with it as it is. After the keel, Im not going to risk it, It either gers reglassed otr it gets cut up!
As I am grinding out what I thought was just cracks on the keel, the resin started falling off literally in chunks,. The ONLY thing holding it together was the cloth. This is not good. Repairable but not what I had hoped for. Had to plan on waiting on resin so the idea was start stripping the bottom down to the fiberglass since the paint is not going to take the barrier coat I bought. Turns out it is cracked all the way up to the water line all the way back from bow tip to transom. Some thing hit this boat and hit it HARD! You can see the one spot that is not cracked, It is a very neatly patched hole, the size of an old silver dollar maybe a bit larger about 3 feet back from the tip of bow. The rest is cracked. How deep does it go? I don't know. The inside looks good. I don't trust the out side. The thought I cannot shake is just like the keel the only thing holding it together is the cloth, I am either putting a layer of glass over it all or it gets cut up. .
THE KEEL
The original idea was to get it low enough to get the cracks ground out, refilled and painted. Well, by the time we got that far there was nothing left resin wise.
About the time we got her this far down I decided it was time to pull the locking pin out completely and remove the keel pin and let her drop. I had to beat the keel pin out., She was bent a good solid 20 degrees and holding tight. Got her beat out and had myself tucked inside braced expecting this heavy steel plate to drop like a rock onto the straps we had in place. NOTHING! She did not budge an inch. Got under it and looked. I original thought maybe we had strapped her in to tight to drop with the safety strap, It was plenty loose enough . We had a good 1/2 inch clearance that would have been tight had she dropped. The keel pin and locking pin were both out and she was stuck tight. The fiberglass in that part of the keel had swollen.
The question at this point was how do we get the front to drop? Gravity seemed the best idea short of having a sky hook. so we got jacks under the back end and pushed her up just a bit to relocate the center of gravity. We eventually had that keel running nearly level and still NOTHING!
It took my saw man slamming into the keel side as hard as he could with a full length landscaping timber to knock her loose 1/ 16th of an inch at a time at first until she gradually started coming out a bit faster up to about 1/4 in at a time. I don't think we ever got her to go farther then a 1/4 of an inch per pounding. It was at least an hour or two of pound, take a short break and pound some more until she finally came out of the hole. By then there was no resin left on her as you can see.
I'm figuring at least 2 maybe 3 gallons of resin and fiber shreds with cloth intermittent to make real sure this don't happen again.
Life Happens. Just make sure you get out there and SAIL!
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