Plant City FL 28° 1' N 082° 6' W

20JUN - 22JUN2009:

When I first took the cover off the boat and checked it over, I noticed a small patch of discoloration on the starboard side keel. I knew that I'd have to address it sooner or later, but I chose to ignore it until after I went sailing. I finally had a few days free after sailing around Anclote Key, so I decided to start hitting some of the boat to do list, starting with this patch on the keel.

The discoloration looked like some minor delamination around a crack about three inches long. I'd read in the on-line Skipper 20 owners group that these small cracks were common due to the way the hull was built. Basically, Southern Sails, Inc. made the hull and keel together, then poured 800 pounds of concrete into the keel pocket, laid glass over the top, then put the liner and deck on. The fiberglass around the keel was apparently too thin and stress cracks developed over time. My boat was built in 1981, so some keel work was probably in order.

My plan was to grind out the glass around the crack and then put a patch over it. Unfortunately, when I started grinding the thin glass cracked more and water started pouring out of the keel. This is where I knew I was in trouble. I'd read in the owner's group that many keels needed to be completely re-glassed due to the previously mentioned stress cracks. I had assumed that mine was not one of these hulls. However the water, which showed no signs of letting up any time soon, indicated otherwise.

I continued grinding away fiberglass until I exposed a portion of the concrete ballast. More water continued to flow from the hole. I started picking away at the fiberglass to see how saturated it was and big chunks started coming off. As I picked away more and more fiberglass I realized that I was also pulling away patching material. Apparently one of the previous owners had patched cracks in the hull with a fairing compound, rather than making a proper fiberglass patch. The delamination and deterioration had spread to eventually encompassed about a square foot of the hull.

I ground down the solid fiberglass surrounding this damaged area out to about three inches. This would eventually give me a solid foundation to lay the patch on. Then I inspected the rest of the hull a little more closely. I found that there were similar patches made by a previous owner all along the keel. I was not going to tackle the whole job now, so I decided to patch what I could. I wanted to sail for as long as I could before spending a two to three week period striping away the bottom paint, grinding the whole keel, then re-glassing up to the waterline.

In order to patch the keel, I got a tight weave fiberglass cloth, a loose fiberglass mat and polyester resin. I cut out a piece of fiberglass mat slightly larger than the hole in the keel, then another layer of mat and two layers of cloth, each slightly larger than the first. I started early on Sunday morning because I wanted to give the resin the whole day to set, which turned out to be not necessary.

I hadn't taken into account that the directions were for room temperature and Florida in the summer is quite a bit warmer than room temperature. After adding the hardener to the resin, the mixture started to set in about ten minutes. Luckily I had all the materials at hand, so I just went about it quickly. Slapping resin onto the hull, then first layer of mat, slap on more resin, tehn the other layer of mat and so on ... In between layers I pressed with my gloved hands and tried to get all the air pockets out. In all it took about half an hour to finish, but the better part of the day to dry completely.

The next day I applied a fairing compound made of polyester resin and micro-balloons, sanded the crap out of it and then once dry, on went the bottom paint. I think the patch came out pretty good, though the fairing and sanding the next day looked like crap. It'll last for awhile and let me sail through the season, but I'll definitely need to spend some time on the hull.

In retrospect, I should have identified problems with the hull prior to buying the boat, but I still like my little boat. Also, I'll use less hardener and a slower setting resin next time.