Keel maintenance

You will remember from my first post on boat maintenance, I mentioned that there appeared to be a need to repair the keel. You know that unexpected expensive job? The one we never budgeted for but Ha! this is boating and this is boat maintenance. Well the man turned up today to do the job.

It would appear that the original epoxy filling between the hull and the front of the keel had separated. This could have been due to shrinkage of the epoxy filling or the fact that I bogged, that is grounded Zofia, on three occasions. The latter is the most likely, however, the effect has been aesthetic only and does not represent structural damage. So to fix the aesthetic problem the man spent all day (did I mention that this process is expensive) removing the old epoxy and refilling the gap and fibreglassing the join.

Front of keel with new filling and fiberglass

Back of keel with new filling and fiberglass

Tomorrow he will return and sand the job so it merges into the hull in a most beautiful manner. I will then cover his work with that expensive paint that is designed to fall off. This will then totally conceal his efforts and the boat will look like new.

So to summarise, we have removed some cracked filling that has no structural purpose with new filling; then sanded the new filling so it matches the hull and finally covered the entire job with paint so that no one can see what has been done. That make sense and by the way, did I mention that this process  is .........!!!