Saturday, August 14, 2010

More tragedy

Broke and I went out to "Gulf Breeze" today to do some more work. We hope to take her out sailing tomorrow. I asked around and even though the po said the keel pin should be replaced it shouldn't hinder taking her out for a small spin. So we brought out a cleaned bimini. Thank you shade. I had Brooke start scraping off the vinyl letters. It's now "Gulf Bre". While she was doing that I started working on removing the starboard side portlight. the fixed one. I am sure that all the sealant wasn't original. I was also surprised that between the outside and inside fiberglass the balsa(?) core wasn't epoxied over. So snit this port light had Ben leaking the wood core was pretty wet and rotted. I left the window out so we will see how much it dries out. I will probably cut some of the wood out, and inject epoxy between the two layers. I thought I read somewhere that is the way to do it.

When it was getting to be high tide, I thought that I would let the keel down, and see how much play there was in it. So i brought my mask and snorkel, got in the water and had Brooke let it down. WOW there seemed to be a lot of play. It was kind of hard to see in the shallow water of the Gulf of Mexico, but something didn't seem right, so i went down again. And again. Then it became clear what wasn't right... It didn't seem to be attached. Sure enough, it was really only hanging on by a thread. I pulled it out from under the boat an had a good look at it. The foam core was pretty water logged, and the fiberglass shell had big sections and cracks all over. This one was done. Also evident, and probably where the problem started, was running it up onto sand to scrub the bottom. This is pretty common practice in Florida, but people fail to remember that a sandy bottom is like sandpaper. Since the nose (if the keel was up) was worn away, I would guess this is where it started. So the whole keel cracked off below the keel trunk. I will try and get some pics tomorrow. On Monday i will call Foss Foam in Gainseville. They use to be in Clearwater, and were the original manufacturers of the keel. Hopefully they will still have the plans, and can fabricate one. Gainsville is only a 2 hour drive away.