Ballast casing and dagger

[Jalal]

Hi,

After last week sailing I noticed water leakage into my boat.
It turned out to be from a track on the keel.
Track runs for 30 Cm and leakage is a few drips per second.
From inside the previous owner has filled all around the casing of the dagger with some sort of glue and I have no visuals.
Please see my pictures https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B799F220 ... A66F%21229 and make a comment.

How should I go about fixing this ?
Does the track indicate that the ballast may break off and fall?
https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B799F220 ... A66F%21229

[atles]

Hi Jalal
sorry to see you have this problum, to me it look like the last owner did a bad repair job in that area
so what you are getting is flex If you took your boat out for a run and watche you would see movement

your looking at a lot of pulling out of the old glass from the inside first.
water has got in the the core as well from the look of it
so you are going to need drying time one you remove the old fiberglass.

i think your fined the cracks on the out side do no mach up to what is inside
your need to run a sander right along the out side to see all the keel start there

you need to seal all the keel cracks then the job of filling from the inside i can not see the bolt or the drop down center
board does it have one ?

[atles]

just a quick add on as you can see in this image were you have glass is not what was their when the boat was made
some one has filled it in maybe the center bolt holding the swing keel was leaking ?

[Jalal]

Thanks atles,

Please explain " so what you are getting is flex If you took your boat out for a run and watched you would see movement" ?





Yes it does have a center board, and it works too! However it cannot be removed because the bolts from inside are covered with glass.

It seems to be very hard, how can I take all that out without damaging the hall or center board case?! Drill, dig with a chisel ...

[atles]

don,t worrier about flex mate if water is sitting under the fiberglass for a long time you get movement that all
the boat is fine. you just need to find out were all this water is coming from,

looking at the photos i say you may have more than one area to go looking lets tick off all the other place first before dig up all the fiberglass

1. do the windows leek ? if so your get water running in the bow air sealed floatation lockers if their not sealed
when it get in their it end up in you bilge over time.
2. the bolts coming in from the deck from the pulpit water runs in to the bow front storage area then in to the bilge
3.stern lockers in the cockpit water sits in them end up seeping in to the back of the boat again ending up in the bilge.
4. fount hatch bolts too look at

run a house over the deck see if fitting are leaking
again sand the keel fill in the cracks. then go sit it at a dock for a few hours and have a cup of coffee
and keep a eye on the bilge.

[Jalal]

Thanks for all your help atles,

I have done a test,
I poured 100 liters of water inside the boat and noticed that it was leaking from the the crack on the keel. The same crack in the photo.
It took a few days!

I need to know if there is any chance that keel breaks off.
I can insulate the leakage from inside and may be from outside too.

[atles]

nice to say the keel will not breaks off that the good thing about fiberglass the weaving go"s all over the place

let me know how you go

[Jalal]

Thanks for the heart warming graph!
I will keep you posted.

[Yara50]

As they say in the classics, the mind boggles as to why resin was poured into your keel area. Using my wild imagination, maybe someone sold the lead ingots and replaced with scrap steel. Scrap steel is commonly used for ballast, but if water gets in and it rusts, it expands and can crack the keel, just like you are experiencing. Would be interesting if you were to drill down inside the boat at a place where there should be lead (photos on this site should help), and see what you have- steel or lead.

[Jalal]

I suspect it may be concrete!
I have seen small pieces of what I think is concrete. https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B799F220 ... %21285&v=3
From broken section of the keel case what I see looks like concrete as well.
https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B799F220 ... %21286&v=3
There is lead as well , I drilled into it and extracted lead pieces.
There is some putty as well .
It is a bad repair job.

Has anyone ever got the lead out of the keel casing ?!