Team Seacats

иконографиясвети илияWith fall regattas and an F18 North American Championship approaching, it was time to put down the framing hammer and pick up a grinder/sander and wheel out the epoxy kit. Our Team Seacats Formula 18 has some areas that needed attention. Both hulls were showing a tendancy to take on water. While a little water in the hulls is normal after a day of sailing, the amount we were getting was a little much. While Frank and I spent a recent weekend training in Charleston, we made a detailed inspection of the boat and found a worrisome crack in the gelcoat on the outboard side of the port daggerboard trunk. You could press on it with your thumb and see some movement…which is a good indication that this feature has gone from cosmetic to structural. Ted Bogardus, who also sails with me often, provided valuable help today to get the boat flipped and start the work on the hulls and cleaning up the foils. Before starting the work, however, I finally found a use for the double stack wood rack I’ve used for the last several years to trailer my A-cat on top of our Nacra 20 to the Keys. It has cut-outs to receive rear and front beams (on a N20) and corner gussets. I thought this might make a great dolly for an inverted F18 and after bolting in four casters, whalla…a great dolly! It works great and I can wheel the boat inside and outside for whatever needs to be done:

So, now it’s time to get to work…here’s the crack (you might need to click to zoom in):

There was also some road rash that the boat got somewhere along the way home from Charleston. I’m guessing a trailer tire kicked something up from the road and punched the starboard hull:

I also found a pretty significant hull leak in the starboard hull at the rudder pintle (a close exam showed that these gelcoat cracks were just cosmetic). I later resealed the rudder hardware to the hull:

I also figured that while I was this deep into the repairs that I should give the bottoms a sanding / fairing. Fortunately, in most areas, the gelcoat is incredibly thick giving plenty of room to remove scratches and rebuff without having to recoat. After going over the hulls with my longboard with 100 grit, 150 grit, and 220 grit, I moved on to the daggerboard trunk repair. Using my side angle grinder and an 80 grit sanding flapper disc, Ted and I went to work and made some nervous discoveries along the way:

I was thinking that we were in good shape now and ready to start rebuilding. When I used my compressed air blower to clean out the incision, I notice there was a spot that kept getting wet when I hit it with air (I have a pretty good air drier so it was unlikely that it was coming from the compressed air supply). Upon further inspection, I noticed that there appeared to be a cavity behind a small void in the seam between the daggerboard trunk and the hull.

I started to get a sinking feeling about this…so I decided to explore it further by opening up the void and putting in a copper wire to see how expansive the void was…watch this: Here’s the full copper wire:

Here it is in the void…yep…it’s easily entered into the interior of the hull. I’m thinking this is a pretty good candidate for a significant leak issue (not to mention structure).

Poop! Now I have to open it all up and figure out how far this void goes and what it looks like so I can figure out how to make it stronger. I’m beginning to think that this void may have been the cause of the crack to begin with. After some more careful grinding with a dremel…wow. I see now that the inner hull skin isn’t even close to being attached to the daggerboard trunk. There’s no filler, no nothing. Just air. I’m glad that I’ve found the cause for the crack – but now I have to figure out how to fix it. Look into my hull!:

I cleaned up the incision removing the jagged edges and making a taper on the edges. I then mixed up some epoxy and cabosil (fumed silica = very hard when cured and awful to try and sand post cure) to make a thick peanut-butter like mixture. I then took a zip-lock bag, spooned the mixture inside, and cut a tiny slice of the corner off to make a cake-icing like bag to inject the filler in the void. My goal was to get the filler to bond the inner skin and the daggerboard trunk and it went in the hull in a very controlled fashion with a very neat finish. It’s possible that I might have to cut an access hole in the hull to put glass on the interior of the hull – but I’m guessing this will probably take care of the issue. Epoxy is, afterall, stronger than air!

After several layers of S-glass, things are looking good. Now I just need to fair it and shoot some gelcoat.