I had said in my last post that there were a lot of scratches under the antifouling but that “None of the damage is deep, no more than a millimeter”.
I have to say that I was wrong about that.
This one, is nearly 5mm deep and since the hull is only 10mm thick, this once can be considered to be significant. This is one of the scratches photographed before, but after I had removed the filler.
These are not quite so deep but deeper that I had expected.
There is also patches of a black substance that looks like tar, but the paint has stuck to it, so I expect that it is not tar or bitumen. I’ve tried using various solvents, except Acetone as I don’t have any, and nothing shifts it. This patch here is after being sanded as well as the solvent tests.
I laos tried to use the belt sander on the hull but the surface is too uneven to allow it to work properly, so I went back to the orbital sander.
This is the progress to date. nThe section of antifouling between the bilge runner and the keel has been removed and I think that this is probably the hardest part of the job. Trying to scrape away the paint at a stretch is not easy on the muscles and I think that when I start the other side, I shall do this bit first.
Scraping progress has been slow this last week as I have been on my own for a week and that means looking after the horse. That in itself isn’t s problem except that the time I had been spending in the cool of the morning between getting up and starting work was now taken up with feeding duties and pooh picking. Frankly, most days it was too hot to do any significant scraping in the afternoon after work, hence the slow progress.
However, that all changes tomorrow and I will be able to get back to scraping first thing and progress should improve,
Now that I have quite a lot of the wood under the waterline exposed, I can see that some of the scraped line up. The one highlighted above shows one such line.
Although the main task is to remove the antifouling and topside paint, there are a few other tasks that need to be done and I decided to use these to break up the paint stripping work which is quite physically, and therefore mentally, demanding.
So, I started on filling the aft part of the slot between the reinforcing timbers and the holes through the keel and hog.
And this is the first piece. Looks good, but takes a while to make since not only does it taper in width…
…it tapers from top to bottom as well.
I used some slightly thickened epoxy to glue the spline into the slot and used lead weights to bend it into the slight curve. The plastic film is to prevent the epoxy sticking to the lead.
The result is fairly good. I had made the spline a little too tall for the slot so that I can cut it down to the correct height as the depth of the slot is not consistent.
Here the spline has been planed down to the correct height and it is ready for the next phase which will be carried out later.
The scraping work continues albeit slowly due to the heat.
The cedar plank arrived in the post during the week from which I will fashion a new skeg.
But firstly I cut out a cardboard template to make sure that I can get two pieces out of the plank. As you can see, not only can I do that but I can avoid the knot in the plank as well.
The wooden stem of the boat is not in very good condition once the keel band was removed and will need to be strengthened before a new band in put in place. This meant that I needed to remove the bobstay, technically the lower bobstay chainplate. Conveniently this is made in two pieces.
I say conveniently because of the six screws (brass of course) holding the fitting to the hull, three came out easily, two turned but did not come out and one broke off.
The leftmost screw shown here is the one that broke off.
Still, with the bolt holding the two parts together removed, the individual plates came away easily. Oddly, the bolt was stainless steel, not brass.
With the chainplate removed it was easy to clean up the area as you can see.
I used my nifty 6.3mm screw-removing tool to take out the degraded brass screw…
Then glued in an Ash dowel. The excess glue was removed with a wet cloth. Once the glue was dry I cut the plug flush with the hull using a pull saw.
Then it was back to work with the hot air gun and scraper.
It is quite apparent that neither of the two previous owners worried too much about bumps and scrapes, they simply filled in the dings with filler and painted it over. None of the damage is deep, no more than a millimeter for these scratches, but there are a lot.
Here is a closer look at some of the scrapes on the sides.
And some on the bottom of the hull nearer the keel.
I am under regular scrutiny by a neighbour who sits outside his house in the sun and can see me working, so I make sure to be seen to sweep up the scrapings and then putting them in a stout bin bag.
I don’t know how many coats of topside paint there are on the boat, but I can easily see four different shades of green and which looks like an undercoat.
As a result some of the scrapings that come off in one piece right down to the wood are quite thick.
This one is 1mm or 1/16″ thick.
Removing the antifouling is very hard work, so I decided to slop a load of the stripper on the paint and leave it overnight to see if it made the removal task any easier.
Progress here is about a third of the way down the side. Progress, but slowly.
The forecast for one morning was for light rain, so I used a plastic tarpaulin to keep Shoal Waters dry. No stripping for today. To wet, then too hot and then because I had too many other non-boat tasks to do around the property.
I also broke the scraper. Well, not broken exactly, but the heat of the sun and the heat of the hot air gun softened the plastic handle enough that the metal scraper section came out, even under light scraping.
As you can see, I have “mended” it with a bolt. Not sure if that will work. If not, then I’ll have to try and buy a new one.
I decided that it would be prudent to try to find the best method of removing the antifouling (AF), and in this case “best” meant fastest that left the hull in good shape. A secondary concern was to leave me in good shape as well, so anything requiring too much physical effort was discarded.
Getting old is the pits (GOITP)!
I started with my best paint scraper and removed as much of the loose AF as possible.
As you can see, the results were mixed. In some places the AF came off right down to the wood with ease, in others it was very resistant to being scraped off. I found that the best way to carry out the scraping was to move the tool along the grain of the underlying wood which prevented the sort of damage to the wood that scraping crosswise made.
I then applied a liberal coating of the AF stripper, left it for the ten minutes as instructed…
… and then scrapped it off.
The result was less than impressive. However, the instructions did say that heavy build up might required more than one application.
In this section of the hull I can count at least 12 layers of AF and barrier paint, so the chemical stripper is not looking that effective in this case.
This is the result obtains using the scrapper, a hot air gun and then a light sanding. This is a good way to remove the AF and it works well on the hull paint and boot top as you can see.
There seems to be a scrape in the hull that has been filled and I expect that there will be more dings and scratches found as more of the bare hull is revealed. This one looks like an unexpected encounter with a rock.
This is the scratch with the filled removed. I’ll fill this and any other such damage, with thickened epoxy before the fibreglass cloth is applied.
Having decided on the best AF removal method, I turned my attention to the keel band, the bronze protection strip on the keel. This came off fairly easily as it is not screwed into the wood but mostly into the filler between the two reinforcing timbers.
In places the filler is a soft mastic like material and in others it is something like polyester resin.
It looks quite messy in places but I think it will clean up fairly well.
The plan is to remove the filler and apply penetrating epoxy and then return to the scraping which I estimate will be the better part of a week to effect, depending on how well I hold up physically, GOITP !
The keel band seems to be made up of several different pieces. There’s this huge chuck that looks original.
There’s another section that is of the same sort of width as the big piece but is very thin.
And there are several other pieces that are the half-round cross section that you find on older wooden dinghies. The large piece will probably be put back but the others will almost certainly be replaced with a stainless steel flat bar,
Time for a cup of tea.
It didn’t take long to clear out the gap between the timbers and give it a light sand.
There were more damaged spots in the timbers that were filled with something that looks a lot like car body filler, but it came out easily enough.
These two were quite deep…
… as were some others. Once the majority of the filler had been removed I put on a liberal coat of penetrating expoy.
Interestingly, the epoxy has highlighted two areas of damage, seen in the shadowed area, where the damage is more or less in the same place.
The next task in the long list of tasks for the rest of the year was to measure the height of the boot top from the gunwale. I marked a number of spots 300mm apart on the gunwale and measured up from these marks to the boot top, noting them down on a piece of paper I must make sure not to lose.
I use a large square and a soft tape to make the meaurements up from the white marks.
The measurements were not exact but then do not need to be.
I decided to trim the backing pad on the transom next, a quick job with a pull saw..
I noticed whilst cutting the backing pad that the antifouling paint is many layers and quite thick.
I decided to try and measure the thickness, just for information which was a quick job with the vernier calipers.
The thickness was 1.3mm more or less. Not insignificant.
I also noticed whilst trimming the backing pad that the skeg had started to lift off the keel and that meant that the wood underneath was unprotected from drying out. That meant removing the skeg entirely so that i could coat the bare wood underneath with penetrating epoxy.
However, this was going to be a problem. There are two bolts protruding through the hog on the inside of the cockpit.
Once here just in front of the transom…
… and one a bit further forward as can bee seen in the above photo just above the bottom of the image. Both are rusted.
I could clearly see where he front one was located in the skeg by the filler that had been put over the top and a little digging with a screwdriver soon prised the fille out revealing the bolt head, also rusted.
I used the multitool to cut the back portion of the skeg away…
…which revealed the head of the second bolt.
The skeg was very loose on the keel and a little persuasion with a crowbar pulled the whole thing apart.
The front bolt came completely away whilst the aft one had waisted in the skeg itself and when the skeg was removed, the upper part of the bolt was left behind, as you can see.
I hit the top of the bolt a few time, bending over the spike of still good metal in the centre but the rusted part of the bolt just shattered away.
This is where the front bolt was, Just rust remains.
I cut off the aft bolt and then used a drift on both bolts, gently hammering the drift which pushed the bolts out through the hog.
They both pulled part of the hog away but that can be repaired with by letting in a graving piece or, more likely given the very restricted access in the cockpit, thickened epoxy.
I cleaned up the slot between the two piece of timber that Charles added, swept up the mess, sanded the timber that was under the skeg and liberally applied penetrating epoxy to prevent drying out and splitting.
I had thought of plugging the two bolt holes with epoxy immediately, but decided not to since it would be difficult to prevent the epoxy from falling out on the inside where I cannot reach for the moment. So, a better bet will be to plug the holes with softwood plugs, using epoxy to glue them in place. The slot between the two piece of timber will also be plugged with a softwood spline, glued in place with epoxy. If the spline is too difficult to make to fit the very aft end where the slot becomes too narrow, then that part will be filled with thickened epoxy.
I have ordered a Cedar plank from which to cut a new skeg. The plank is 32mm thick and I should be able to get two skeg shaped pieces out of this which will be glued together and the epoxied on to the keel one the sheathing and epoxying has been done.
Before making the spline I need a template.
I wedged a piece of cardboard into the slot and used a black marker to draw along the slot where the spline needs to go.
The wedges served two purposes. The first was to push the cardboard against the side of the slot and the second was to stop it from blowing away !
I carefully cut along the line to make the template. As you can see, there isn’t much of a curve, but it needs to be done. I put this away in a safe place for later.
It has been some considerable time since I last carried out any sustained work on Shoal Waters, primarily due to getting my own boat Naiad ready, then launching her then doing some sailing whilst the weather allowed. I will be unable to sail for the next few weekends, so the time has come to continue with the Shoal Waters’ refurbishment.
The first task of the day is to invert the boat since it is the hull upon which I need to work next and that is not possible when she is the correct way up. So, the gantry cranes were rigged and put into position, Shoal Waters on the working trailer positioned and strops attached to the hoists and then the tedious process started.
Down on one side and up on the other.
I dislike this part of boat maintenance intensely.
I know it is necessary but that still doesn’t mean I like it much.
More and more she tipped over.
And despite looking like she would tip right over about here, she did not.
It was only at this point that she finally tipped over the center of gravity and came to rest on the strops and chains on the other side.
This shows just how much the topsides have to cant over before the tipping point is reached.
Then it is lowering down instead of lifting up, again little by little. No need to rush, we were not in a hurry.
Until she was finally down and resting on blocks.
This is as low as she can be, the main hatch frame is a centimetre or so above the concrete. Time to get to work.
The first task is to remove the paint and antifouling from the keel. Parts of it, as you can see here, are already bare, the accumulation of paint having chipped off sometime since she was last in the water.
I set to with a sharp paint scraper and it didn’t take long to remove the majority of the paint from one side of the keel. This is the after photo…
…and this is the before picture. Quite a difference.
It is quite evident that these pieces of wood are the pieces that were first put onto the hull after she was delivered to Charles Stock way back in 1963. In his book “Sailing Just for Fun” Charles says this:
Fitting a shallow keel below the moulded hull to protect it when grounding or hauled ashore, for the winter, was the first problem. Shaping a solid piece of wood was beyond my skill so I used two pieces of wood three inches by a half inch, laid each side of the keel ridge and glued and fixed into the hull laminates and hog with alternate gripfast nails and brass screws every three inches (p25)
And surprisingly the nails and screws are in better condition than I expected.
There is a lot of evidence of repaired dings and scrapes along these two pieces of timber, but that was the reason for them being there in the first place.
The keel looks to be in poor condition when first viewed but this was not the case.
Here is the keel with most of the paint removed and having been given a fairly aggressive sanding using an angle grinder and a sanding disk.
Finally, the exposed wood was liberally coated with the penetrating epoxy I have. This was an important step in the cleaning up of the keel. We have just had several week of hot weather and although is wasn’t hot today, the forecast indicates that the temperature will rise again over the next few days and the last thing I want to happen is for the exposed timber to dry out and split.
Hence the epoxy coating. I’ll probably put another coat on tomorrow, just to ensure good penetration.
This will not be a problem for the hull itself as this is made of four 2.5mm layers of Agba that have been glued together in a process known as hot moulding. This heats up the wood and glue and the glue then seeps into the wood. It is unlikely that the hull will dry out and split even in the hot weather.
The next task on the list is to measure the distance from the underside of the gunwale to the lower edge of the boot top so that when I get to the point of repainting I know where to put the different layers of paint.
I noticed that the bilge runners were not in good shape as I worked on the keel.
This is an example. Both runners have cracks and crushed sections and will need some serious remedial work. The damage to the keel, skeg, forefoot and bilge runners is not at all surprising when you consider that Shoal Waters spent most of her life to date on drying moorings where the ground consisted of shingle and mud.
Every time the tide went out, she would be deposited on the shingle and every time the tide rose, she would be lifted off the shingle. Now, in calm weather that would not be a problem, but even in a moderate slop, the waves would bounce the boat on the ground for a few minutes until she was firmly aground, or floating.
And that is when the majority of the damage occured.
Before I turn Shoal Waters over for her hull work, I need to finish a few things first, primarily the backing board for the pintle.
I’m fairly sure that the screws in the two lower holes in the pintle come out above the keel timber, or would if they were longer. I can see the remains of two prior screws that have been degraded.
I drilled the holes right through the transom, and sure enough, they were above the keel, although not by a lot in the case of the one one the port side. I found two 6mm bolts of a suitable length as you can see here.
This is good news since these two holes are below the waterline and I don’t like using screws since they are difficult to get and maintain a good seal. The intention is to open out the holes to 13mm, fill them with thickened epoxy and then drill the correct 6mm hole through the centre of the epoxy. This ensures a very good seal between the wood and the epoxy and allows the use of butyl tape to make a good seal between the pintle, bolt and the epoxy.
On to the backing pad itself. A template for this was constructed out of low quality plywood and from this two pieces cut out of the 6mm marine plywood and glued together. The mounting holes were transferred to the new pad by holding up the pad to the transom in the correct place and wedging it there with a post. A crosspoint screwdriver with a diameter of 6mm was pushed firmly through one of the holes from the inside, marking the plywood.
After that holes was drilled the pad was bolted in place os that the other holes could be marked. The bare transom was coated with neat epoxy, as was the outer face of the pad and lots of thickened epoxy spread on the pack of the pad. And by lots I really do mean lots of thickened epoxy. The bolts were put in place and tightened up squeezing out about half of the epoxy. This was deliberate as the transom was not entirely flat and having an excess of epoxy that squeezed out meant that there would be not gaps or voids between the transom and the pad. Finally, peel ply was put onto the pad and neat epoxy used to thorughly wet it out.
After a few hours, when the epoxy was sufficiently cured to stay in place without the bolts, they were removed through holes that I’d cut in the peel ply before laying it on.
The following day the peel ply was removed. The excess will be tidied up after the epoxy work is completed, which is not now.
Two of the holes, one upper and one lower, were drilled out to 13mm, firstly using a stepped bit to 10mm and then by drilling successively larger bits through the holes.
This is the view from the inside. Now you may be asking yourselves why only two of the holes? The answer is so that I can use the other two to fit the pintle and mark the correct position of the new holes in the epoxy. Once these two holes are done the other two holes will be similarly treated.
I did, however, have to spend some time cleaning the curing epoxy off the bolts.
I have an epoxy solvent that does the job fairly well but only on epoxy that is still soft. Once it is hard you need to use heat to soften the epoxy enough to scrape it off. The bolts cleaned up well, ready to be used once the rest of the epoxy work is done.
I’ve not been able to carry out any work on either of the boats, or anything else for that matter, in the last 11 days. Primarily due to having sprained my right wrist which has prevented me from carrying out anything that requires rotating the wrist unless I wear a rigid support. Wearing the support then prevents me from holding tools properly and that prevents work!
The sprain was caused by using a cordless driver on low-speed, high torque setting and having the bit jam in the wood. That wrenched my hand around and sprained my wrist. I should have been holding the driver with both hands with the workpiece clamped in a vice. But I took a shortcut and held the wood with one hand and used the driver with the other. I did know better, but was rushing. Stupid me!
Still, the sprain is nearly at the stage of being healed, but not quite. It is at the stage of being unnoticeable enough that you forget that you still need to be carefull until you over use it and ouch !!!
There has also been a change in the direction that the work on Shoal Waters has taken in that she will not be put into the water this season. Instead, Naiad will be launched and moored at the sailing club. Shoal Waters will have the work that was scheduled to be carried out next year, done this instead.
The reason for the change is that having found the crack in the glue line between the hull and the keel at the stern (highlighted above), I am no longer confident about the tightness and strength of the hull. Although I can see the crack here, I do not know its extent. Does it continue forward and this is the only bit that is open to the outside? It is deeper than it appears here?
That and the fact that I cannot locate the leak in the hull on the port side that I know is there, just not where it starts.
So, during this season, Shoal Waters will be inverted, the paint and antifouling scrapped off the hull and sanded back to the wood, any dings and scratches filled, the right angle edges smoothed off and then sheathed in epoxy and glass fibre. This will certainly fix the leaks in the bottom and also provide a great deal of additional strength to the hull. Then she will be repainted ready to be launched next season whilst Naiad is brought ashore to have her maintenance done.
After that, we shall see what happens.
So, for now the plan is to get Naiad ready to launch and then invert Shoal Waters and make a start on her sheathing. As a side note, Naiad’s hull was sheathed more than thirty years ago by her previous owner and has not suffered leaks of loss of strength as a result, so this is not an unusual thing to be doing.
The launch of Naiad and the inversion of Shoal Waters will require the use of the gantry cranes and these need to be coated in preservative before that hapens.
Recently the legs and gantries were taken apart and stowed in the hay barn out of the weather. The legs are sufficiently tight in the feet as to require two people and a crowbar to remove, so that had to be fixed before the coating.
All the bolt holes also needed to be opened out to 13mm as the wood had expanded due to the moisture in the air and the bolts, although a loose(ish) fit originally, had become a tight fit requiring the use of a hammer and drift to get them out. The feet and legs were separated…
… a thin layer of wood sanded off the lower part of the legs to make them less of a tight fit in the feet and then coated with a replacement for the creosote that we used to use but is now banned. Shame, since the alternatives are not as good.
The cross beams have yet to be taken apart as space is limited. They will be treated once the legs and feet are done.
Once the cranes have been coated and reassembled, Naiad will lifted up off the blocks so that I can scrape the hull.
This is what she looks like right now with a fair number of dead barnacles as well as the dried mud I was not able to get off when she was on the travelling trailer.
This is after a couple of minutes work with a scraper. The dried mud and dead barnacles come off very easily.
Then Naiad will be put onto the travelling trailer and Shoal Waters moved to the hard standing and inverted. I can’t put her into the har barn inverted as the cranes are too high for that and the working trailer is not set up for an inverted boat.
Instead, I’ll use the cranes to support a plastic tarpaulin as a temporary working space whilst the hull work is done.
Unless I can figure out a way to get Shoal Waters onto the working trailer inverted.
Since the source of the leak is not obvious, the next step was to remove the outer backing pad to see what was under it.
Firstly, I used a sanding disk to remove the antifouling paint from the pad. This revealed four fixings and the two old, plugged fixings.
The screws, stainless ones, were removed and the pad removed in pieces using a chisel, followed by the sanding pad. Here it can be seen that the pintle has been positioned five separate times, there are 16 plugged holes and the four current ones . The old holes have been plugged and there is no obvious leak.
The leak on the inside is shown by the cyan circle on the image, and although there is a fixing hole within this area, it does not appear as though there is a leak here.
I took a scraper to the antifouling paint on the join between the hull planking and the keel and found that there is a definite gap that you can see highlighted in the image above. It does not appear to be on the other side of the keel and I will have to remove more of the antifouling along this seam to find the extent of the crack. However, there is a very good chance that this is the source of the leak.
If the crack does not extend any further, then the fix will be to open the crack slightly by cutting a chamfer on the keel and then paying this with SikaFlex. If the crack is longer, then it might require a glass fibre tape to be epoxied over the crack.
Whatever the method of the fix, the outer pad needs to be replaced and the pintle refitted. Given the various constraints it may not be possible to move the fitting up such that bolts can be used. If screws are used then they will need to be longer than the previous ones and well sealed.
The next leak to investigate is the one at the bottom of the transom.
To remind you , this is where the water is seeping onto the hull.
And the cause is probably something to do with this, the lower pintle. The first thing to do is to get the fixing removed so that the pintle itself can be removed from the transom. You’ll note that two lower fixings are below the water line.
On the inside, you can see that the two upper fixings are bolts, stainless steel by the looks of them and the lower two are probably screws as they cannot be seen.
Removing the layers of antifouling paint revealed the screw heads and these were easily unscrewed. Too easily if the truth be told, they were almost loose in the holes. Definitely not a good sign, although I expect that the holes would close up a little after immersion.
The screws were in good condition but to my eye quite a lot shorter that I would have used. Well, if I had used screws that is. Generally speaking it is a bad idea to use screws below the waterline. You rarely get a lasting good seal.
The upper two fixings came out easily and are also in good condition.
The multi-tool was then used to cut away the block on top of the keel. You’ll notice that I cut upwards at a slight angle so as not to cut into the keel itself.
Once the cut section had been removed, I carefully cut away the remaining portion and then used a chisel to clean up the top of the keel.
In the process of cutting away the block I noticed the remains of a brass screw coming through the transom. I presume that this was an old fixing for the pintle. I suspect that this is the main contributor to the the leak.
There was the remains of a second brass screw on the other side of the transom. This one seems to be in better condition that the first one to be found.
And this does not help. There is a channel in the wood starting by the old screw and going out to the side of the keel. Any water that made its way through the screw hole would then find its way along the channel and out from under the paint. This is exactly what I saw during the leak test.
So, how to fix this? The First thing to do is to locate the old fixings, remove them and plug the holes to make them watertight. After that I would say that the best thing would be to raise the pintle such that the lower fixings are not underwater and to use bolts here as well.
The problem with this solution is that the gudgeon on the rudder stock can only be raised by 20mm before it fouls the pivot bolt.
Now, the holes in the pintle are 38mm apart meaning that if the pintle is raised 20mm, the lower holes will be 18mm below the existing upper holes.
This may not be above the waterline, but it will be above the keel and that allows the use of bolts for the lower fixings. Bolts can be made watertight easily.
So the plan is to locate and remove the old fixings from the outside and plug those holes. You can see two old fixings above the current holes under the white paint. These probably need to be checked.
The existing upper bolt holes will also be plugged.
The gudgeon on the rudder stock needs to be raised as far as it will go and then the rudder stock can be hung on the upper fitting allowing the correct new position of the lower pintle to be marked.
The lower holes will be drilled through the transom and if necessary, a backing pad will be fitted on the inside. This will be sealed against the transom and keel to ensure a watertight joint. If necessary it will be made in the shape of an upside down ‘U’ such that it fits over the keel. Sealant will be used liberally to ensure a watertight joint between the transom, keel, hull and backing pad.
Finally, the pintle will be fitted in the new position making sure that all the bolts are watertight.
I have to confess that it was very difficult to get started on anything Shoal Waters related today. In fact, I did not start anything until after lunch. But eventually I made the effort and continued the task of the leaks in the cockpit.
Again I chose small tasks to begin with and that meant hot air gun and scraper to remove some of the paint on the starboard side of the aft block. Not a complete scrape, just enough to locate the screws.
Then it was a case of using the multi-tool, hammer and chisel to remove the runners.
Once most of the thickness of the runners was taken away, the rest broke off the keel, splitting along the glue line. These are some of the pieces that just came off, indicating that the bond was not longer good.
This screw was interesting. The left image is what remained on the port side and the right image shows the large screw that it was originally.
I suppose it was the work of about an hour to clear the runners away and then sweep up the mess. The wood of the aft block is quite wet but it does not seem to have any rot. The plan for this part of the leak repairs is to cut new runners to replace the old ones and then leave the repair so that the wood has a chance to dry out.
Then the wood will be soaked in penetrating epoxy, allowing that to cure before fitting the new runners.
The two outer runners will start at the forward end of the centerplate case and run all the way back to the aft, seen here. This means that it will not be fitted until all the other centerline leaks have been dealt with. This runner will be glued in place and screwed with just enough screws to hold it in place as it will be curved to fit the keel.
The upper runner, originally the same width as the runner that came with the hull, will be cut wider than before such that the wood overlaps the join between the two lower runners, thus providing more “leak proofing”.
None of the keel leaks around the case are a problem. The two that will probably be a little more taxing are the transom leak and the leak under the port bulkhead that forms the front of the footwell.
