Sailing Vessel Froo Gal: October 2016

23 October 2016

TREATING THE KEEL (PART 3)

Doing a proper job this time (Autumn 2016)

Well, the moment of truth; the hurried repair from last year did not seem to have made the corrosion on the keel any worse. And if anything the anodes had done their job, slowing the corrosion to next to nothing (although we lost the Saildrive anode altogether, but without any damage to the Saildrive or prop).

There were a couple of large blisters on the port hand side of the keel, where the incompatibility of the single-part red oxide primer with the two-part epoxy primer really showed.

The growth on the bottom 15 centimeters of the keel is a bit of a mystery, but the pressure washer took it off pretty cleanly.

The starboard side was different. There was damp solvent between the part layers, which caused about half of the anti-foul to peel off (easily) in large sheets.

Of course, the other half clung to the keel and would not budged with less than an aggressive grinding disc and wire brush on an angle grinder.


Two coats. Copyright (c) 2016. Froo Gal. All Rights Reserved.

This time, we took the starboard side of the keel back to bare metal, sanded then de-greased it with thinner, filled and fared the corrosion pits with West System 407 filler epoxy mix and covered it with four coats of Hempel two-part light primer. Great.

As a bit of an experiment (and to save time) we just patched the areas that had bubbled on the port side. With just a day of anti-fouling to go (after a week of curing), and adding new anodes we will have finished the job in three weekends, weather permitting.