Buddy Sharpton
04-16-2003, 01:18 PM
Pulling my cold molded 15' MarshCat( after having been left in the water a few days) and parking it on a trailer in the carport after an hour haul back home, I noticed two very slow drips from the keelson both ahead and behind the centerboard slot. Looking carefully, I noticed that in the vertical i" sided keelson, in many places the single 6 oz fiberglass epoxied bottom sheathing had cracked midway on the "flat", right where the inside rounded fillet meeting the hull , and the rounded outer edge of the keelson transition. Somes the crack was an inch long, some places several feet. This boat looks constructed to plans, which would have this keelson of 1" white oak(it is white oak) bent over the 1/2" thick mahogany veneer hull, all meeting pieces slathered in epoxy and then this radius added in epoxy with filler. It is screw fastebned as well. Rverything is plenty tight and strong, but it appears the dimensional timber of the keelson has swelled, as they are wont to do and cracked the glass. This boat lives on a trailer and from what I have probed and found, nothing is soft. Previously I tacked a similar problem with the joining of the centerboard trunk logs to the keelson and hull and it all looks fine. Obviously water is getting in somewhere. When I did the centerboard trunk repair, I found absolutely no "punky" wood. It seemed all the individual pieces were indeed jacketed with epoxy. The water was in voids between the layers or joints.
I could gring off al this 1" band of glass , sand out a bit more. Let it dry well, fill any voids with epoxy filler and reglass with three layers of cloth and hope it will not crack. Or should I open up that seam, reassure myself the surfaces of the keelson and the veneered hull are individually well coated and let the "joint"be left open and free to flex? Or should I caulk it with a flexible polysulphide caulk and not glass over? Or I could just let it be? Any ideas on the real worry factor of the weeping, have you fixed something similar, what other idea would you suggest? We're talking about a drip that lasts for a few hours, hard to tell but maybe a half cup of water. When I park the boat on an inclined driveway after hauling home level, about that much, maybe a cup drained out of the "new" lowest point of the keelson at the transom now, raher than at the forward and aft openings of the centerboard slot when the boat is parked level. So obviously, that joint is holding water "outside" the hull proper and takes time to drain out of a crack in the sheathing somewhere and run downhill along the keelson to from a droplet at the lowest point. This is never a stream, just a weep. Thanks for your help.
I could gring off al this 1" band of glass , sand out a bit more. Let it dry well, fill any voids with epoxy filler and reglass with three layers of cloth and hope it will not crack. Or should I open up that seam, reassure myself the surfaces of the keelson and the veneered hull are individually well coated and let the "joint"be left open and free to flex? Or should I caulk it with a flexible polysulphide caulk and not glass over? Or I could just let it be? Any ideas on the real worry factor of the weeping, have you fixed something similar, what other idea would you suggest? We're talking about a drip that lasts for a few hours, hard to tell but maybe a half cup of water. When I park the boat on an inclined driveway after hauling home level, about that much, maybe a cup drained out of the "new" lowest point of the keelson at the transom now, raher than at the forward and aft openings of the centerboard slot when the boat is parked level. So obviously, that joint is holding water "outside" the hull proper and takes time to drain out of a crack in the sheathing somewhere and run downhill along the keelson to from a droplet at the lowest point. This is never a stream, just a weep. Thanks for your help.