Centerboard

When we first hauled Joyeux in October, we removed the centerboard (CB) and set it aside to be treated the same as the bottom. The top of the CB had only gel coat applied in 2004 – no antifouling, and it was in perfect shape. The lower part of the CB needed a bit of work. Once we got it down to bare glass, we discovered a large patch of badly cured epoxy along with a repaired area of glass mat which hadn't had enough resin. Removal of this patch allowed me to take a photo of the lead in the center of the CB – pellets mixed with resin. Interesting. We repaired that section and all the small blisters with fiberglass mat and resin, then applied gel coat, primer, and antifouling, leaving the top with just gel coat as before.

At this point Cesar, the machinist I'd been working, with told me it would be a good idea to machine a new pin and bushing, since the old pin was badly pitted and the CB bushing was worn out of round. He machined the new parts with 15/1000s clearance.

As soon as we got the new bushing installed in the CB we tried it in the trunk (the 1^st time). It stuck. Thus began the epic of fitting the CB. I lost count of how many times we were up and down in the Travelift. First we determined that the pin did not sit in the CB perpendicular to its axis so, after removing the bushing and filling the hole we loaded it into Cesar's truck and took it to his shop where he bored a new hole. We re-installed the bushing and tried it again, and it stuck again. Now we could see that the pin was not perpendicular to the keel. So I drilled oversize holes in the keel allowing the pin to find its own center and tried it again, and it stuck again. With the CB once again out of the boat we could see where it was binding, and tried sanding down the trunk interior in those spots. See photo of our “tool”. This proved to be impractical.

I next built a thickness gauge to measure inside the trunk and found that the width varied widely. It was more or less 3” at the forward end where the top of the CB rested and tapered aft irregularly to less than 2-3/4” in places. I transferred the widths to the CB and found that after the repair and applying the new gel coat, etc. it was too wide in places. So we ground off all our previous work down to bare fiberglass and using a thickness gauge I built out of steel angle and wood blocks, we took down the board to a thickness of 3/16” less than the trunk. We also used “Diablo” gel paint remover inside the trunk to take off all the accumulated coats of antifouling – a total of at least 7 layers. This stuff is really toxic.

Next came fairing the CB with layers of gelcoat and sanding by hand. I used a 3M black rubber sanding block. The workers had never seen one. I told them about the flexible long board sanding tool and they couldn't comprehend it. I did all of this work myself.

Finally I applied 1 coat of antifouling to the bottom part of the CB, and we tried it yet again. This time it fit. Now came the delicate task of aligning the CB in the trunk using wedges and shims, and filling in the spaces between the pin and the keel with epoxy. During all this I didn't use the actual pin; rather a length of stainless tube that gave us 12” extra on each side of the keel. Santos mixed a paste of local epoxy with finely chopped mat and applied it in the holes, then tried to force the tube through it, cutting a hole as it went. I told him this wouldn't work, and I was right. But these guys have to see for themselves. So out with the CB and removal of all the paste, then back into the keel, and realignment. Santos went off to grind on the bottom of another boat and I did all the rest of the work myself. I built “dams” of modeling clay and waxed LDPE sheet between the CB and the keel, and at the outsides of the keel, and using West Systems epoxy and slow hardener (106) I injected the epoxy into the cavities using a 50cc syringe. This method worked. Then I cleaned up the modeling clay, filled in the injection cavities, and put the pin into the keel. Now that everything was aligned, the pin was 1/4” too long! A final test in the Travelift and shortening the pin, then fairing the keel, and we are now afloat with the CB working great.