Surgery
Deep in the Heart of an H28
Being
the proud owner of a Compass Yacht built
Herreshoff H28, I would like to share
with other H28 owners an experience I
had with my boat, Centesimal, during the
winter of 2000.
The
Problem: Early
last year, I noticed all was not well
with the keel. A problem I had read
about (and hoped never to encounter!)
was in fact present. Water from the
bilge was entering the keel via a poorly
built bulkhead just forward of the
engine. The steel punchings that make up
the ballast had become badly corroded,
and as a result, had swelled and were
pushed out through the fibreglass.
Splits were clearly visible on the
outside of the keel The punchings in the
bottom third of the keel had
understandably deteriorated the most,
and formed a solid (but growing!) mass
of rusted metal.
The
Preparation:
Before attempting the repair, I sought
the advice of local boat builders and
yachties, but could find no one who had
fixed one of these problems. I was going
to have to "Make it up as I went
along."
As I
live by an estuary, it was a relatively
simple process to have a crane lift the
boat from the water, and place it in a
cradle on my front lawn. Once the boat
was in place, my son Philip and I made a
start I could see it was going to be a
very dirty job, so the first thing we
did was to strip all the gear from the
boat’s interior. To gain access to the
keel, I used a skill saw to cut around
the plywood floor, about 50mm from the
bunks, doors etc. To tie the side of the
hull together, the top of the keel had a
thick layer of woven rovings and
fibreglass. To get to the punchings
beneath, this had to be removed by
cutting into squares with an angle
grinder (this proved to be one of the
hardest jobs as the resin had bonded
with the top layer of punchings).
Out
with the Old:
We could now commence the process of
breaking up the rust, steel, rusted
steel, resin etc. This was a slow, dusty
job and resulted in more than a few
bleeding knuckles! We started at the
engine (aft) end. This was the easiest
"entry point" as this was
where the corrosion was worst (and
therefore the metal relatively soft).
After experimenting with a variety of
tools, I found a sledgehammer to be most
effective against the top layers, where
the punchings were still in good
condition. Lower down, not only did the
corrosion increase, but the punchings
became interspersed with smaller objects
such as nuts, bolts and even bits of
wire. To break up this stuff I used a
small air chisel. The old ballast was
removed with garden trowels, 10 litre
paint pails, and a hell of a lot of
sweat. I ground and sanded the inside of
the now empty keel to remove the last of
the rust and the few punchings that were
embedded in the fibreglass. To finish
off I thoroughly cleaned away the dust,
and the oil and bilge water that had
penetrated the full length of the keel.
