The next task on the list is to put the skeg in place, which is a little more difficult since it needs to be held in place whilst the epoxy cures. The new cover arrangement suits this quite well for two reasons.
Firstly, the cover is kept away from the centreline far enough that the skeg does not touch either the cover or the ladder that is holding it up and the second it that I can use the ladder to hold braces for the skeg.
The recently applied epoxy was sanded to give a good key.
As was the epoxy around the bottom of the skeg, for the same reason.
Just resting the skeg in place shows that it is slightly canted over to the left looking at it from behind and that meant I had to brace it to place it upright.
Two cramps and two pieces of wood did the trick. The wood was clamped to the ladder as can be seen here.
Now the skeg is vertical.
The underside of the skeg was given a coat of neat epoxy…
…before being slathered with a lot of thickened epoxy.
The skeg was pressed down onto the keel in the correct place and the braces adjusted to make it vertical again. One of them had to be removed temporarily so that I could get the skeg into the correct position.
Peel ply was applied over the squeeze out to form a nice fillet.
I used my fingers to shape the fillet, suitably covered in nitrile gloves I hasten to add.
The forward end was pressed down and another piece of wood used to stop it from lifting.
But it didn’t stop the front end of the skeg from slipping sideways, so I used two pieces to keep it in the right place.
I spent some time sighting along the length of the skeg to ensure that it was aligned correctly. The grain of the wood did make this a little awkward since that made it look as though the skeg were pointing a little to one side, but when viewed from the front of the boat it was seen to be correct.
A few hours later the weather stopped being inclement and I removed the cover and the makeshift supports.
Here is the skeg pretty well fixed in place. The epoxy is hard enough that I can’t score it with a fingernail, the usual way to see if the epoxy is still green, but I won’t remove the peel ply until tomorrow.
A good day’s work.
Time for a cup of tea.