Experts comments welcome

I am far from an expert (drip under pressure ) SirG but obviously there has been some movement around the rudder and the keel join.

My suggestion is to retension the keel bolts, chisel or grind out around the join as necessary and epoxy fill the area.

With the rudder I think dropping it out, replacing bearings if justified and doing the same as above. With that it should all be good for another 30 years.

I posted a while ago about my "Rotten Rudder and Skeg" which are the only timber parts of my boat. Lots of worms. The only thing to do was to chop it all back to good timber, relaminate to size, shape and refair it and then glass over the lot.

Doing this has given me the confidence that the repair will outlast me.

I think you like I have the perfect yacht for our purposes and are not considering selling and buying another. If that is the case it is worth spending some money now instead of much more money later.
Cheers Cisco.

Please carry on....

So far 223 read it, only 2 commented...

Please carry on!

SV, since your possibly not excited about the comments, or lack of, here's a couple you can ponder from an uneducated observer.

As good as the pics are, I think nothing is as good as seeing in person.
eg, from the above comment about the keel, my eyes would have suggested that's the leading edge of the keel, not trailing
.As such, I think we'd need to be cautious about suggesting she'd be right, slab some new bog on and good to go.

Having said that, If the boat was mine, I'd first do as suggested, carefully clean out the the fairling line, it looks like the fairing has cracks further along the line anyhow. The sole is pretty thick obviously, what you are seeing is just fairing, and just about every boat I've seen has flexing cracks in this area. How long have you had the boat? Unless this area is pretty spotless to repair, any patch job that isn't seriously clean, void of antifoul, dry, etc, is more than likely to give you a similar recrack later anyhow. Maybe a previous repair was less than perfect.

I'd bet that at least initially, it's going to start off as just cosmetic. .So clean it out carefully, and try get an idea if it's wet the whole way though. Then consider how old your keel bolts are, and maybe pull a couple out to get a good gauge. If you don't like what you see, I have seen boats have the keel rebedded totally, all bolts out, boat held on slings, the keel lowered enough to fully access the keel stub, repair, and rebolt.
My totally uneducated guess is probably that portion of filler along the leading edge has dropped away sometime since you last antifoulded, possibly from running aground? stuck inmud? then you've got an area were some discoloration and growth begins, and ednd up looking worse than it likely is..
How dry are your bildges, do you get anything around the keelbolts? Based on the above, I'd try and let it dry out, till you cant see any weeping while your doing other stuff on the slip, and degrease, prime with a few coats of epoxy then some coats of thicked epoxy paste. If the keel bolts are fine, and the leading edge of the hull shoe still looks clean and not sogged out, I think you are ok.

Rudder: The crack lines around the rudder blade fairing , plus the cracked out bit of hull fairing are were i'd be more focussed this time around.I'd expect the rudder stocks is a stainless shaft, with stainless tangs welded internally back into the blade face,and the blade skin itself is pretty thin at the leading edge where it's faired to the shaft?
again it can be pretty hard to bond glass to the stainless shaft, and that area is a common place for the glass line and shaft to move or crack. Again, careful clean out with a scraper, and try to figure out how wet the rudder might be inside. Worst case, drop it out, strip it right down with the sander, and reglass the leading edge. Can you post a full length pic of the rudder, and around the rudder pintels?
If there's not much length on the leading edge below the prop cutout, that upper area might be pretty important, and it would be good to be able to figure out if the blade has shifted up at some stage (to cause that filler to crack out)

Was it HG's H28 blade that looked fine but inside the case the tangs were stuffed?


Perhaps do some digging tomorrow, post up a few happy snaps, and the brains trust might give you some more suggestions.

My keel was like that but worse,, it was loose, So I pulled all the bolts out, dropped the keel off and re-bedded it. I replaced the bolts that where corroded and bent and fixed a few problems regarding the way it was fastened on. Its on the hard stand again right now and I'm going to defiantly retention the bolts. Some boats are just poorly structured to flawlessly support 2 plus ton of lead swinging off the bottom on a row of bolts so the problem will always re occur.,,,,Crank that backstay on and watch the keel smile

I never said it was my boat! God forbid !
l am an Adams person. My yacht was hand built using Vinylester resin and it has a transom-skeg hung rudder.

The boat is a production line built Cav32, 197? It was built using Iso resin.
l was working on it giving my mate a hand antifouling it.
The gap on the keel is on the trailing edge of the keel. Someone, a shipwright, filled it with silicon a while ago. The bilge is bone dry, the bolts are solid.

I was only thinking, what would l do, if it was mine..
.?
I agree with you, nevertheless, l would investigate.

SV your comment on how many had read this thread, but so little were prepared to provide feedback suggested you were a little dismayed, and it would be fair to assume you had a little more attactchent to this issue than it just being someone elses boat.

Not that the suggestions given would be different, but maybe it could have been given some context first.

May be not iso resin, it was a blind guess as it was left as seen, not touched except by the roller, l have no clue what kind of resin they used in the seventies.

As there are the iso, ortho, vinylester and epoxy resins to my knowledge, l guessed iso was the most common in the early days. I might be mistaken thou.

The word in the title of the thread 'comment' not 'advise' is general, non committal and impersonal in nature.

However, it makes no difference who owns the boat.
Regardless of ownership, the treatment described is one possibility and we all learned from your comment a lot. Thanks! I agree with those, who would investigate.

The boat got antifouled, polished and launched.
It is owned by the same person since new and he is one of my permanent sailing mates. I on mine he on his shooting around on many days.
The rudder stock is rock solid, no play of any sort is detected.
Happy sailing again.

Re: rudder
i had a similar issue on my yacht
shipwright advised cutting away envelope to check on Ss frame.
the frame was ok,so just filled in with glass/epoxy
godd 2years later
Best wishes