S2 6.9 Sailboat "JollyMon": Rudder and Keel Rehab

Rudder Work

I am getting close to putting the boat in the water for the season. Memorial Day usually is the official start of our summer season here in the Midwest. Like other parts of the country we have had an unusually wet and cool spring.

Last weekend I put both boat lifts in the water along with the dock. The water level is still a little high so I have not put all sections of the dock in yet.

I was taking a look a the rudder the other day making sure it was ready to go. I notice that it had a huge crack in the top where it pivots. I took the bolt out that holds it in and found some major damage. Further inspection showed that the top portion of the rudder was hollow around the pivot bolt. The torque on the rudder caused it to crack.

I cleaned out the crack and remove the broken pieces. I ground down the face of the top portion of the rudder to allow me to add some fiberglass cloth and resin for reinforcement. I got out my epoxy resin and mixed up about 12 ounces. I set the rudder on edge and poured in the resin to fill up the void inside the top portion of the rudder. Once that curred I applied the cloth and resin over the face of the rudder and wrapped it over the edge to reinforce the broken spot. I put on two layers of cloth and resin.

The trailing edge of the rudder had three spots the size of a quarter that were broken out. I sanded and taped off these areas and applied a little epoxy resin to fill in the voids. Once dry I sanded these down to contour with the edge.

The picture below is the finished product. I should have taken some pictures during the glassing to give you a better idea of the damage. I gave it four coats of the same bottom paint I used on the hull. Interlux VC Offshore Epoxy.

Finished Rudder with epoxy paint, the damage was on the top of the rudder on the right end of the picture

Keel Work

I noticed the previous owner had run into a few object and caused a little damage to the bottom of the keel. He had made an attempt to apply some bondo fiberglass to fix the problem. I chipped all of that off and ground it down. It appears that the keel in encapsulated in what appears to be foam.

The repair will involve applying epoxy resin and several layers of fiberglass cloth to seal the keel up and prevent water intrusion. I will attached more pictures as the process progresses. The shot below show the keel prepared for fiberglass.