Jon, First off, you should go after the hauler if you can document the damage.
On the failed repairs, it sound to me from the information you've given (and a few assumptions) that you've done the repairs while there is considerable compression pressure on the (blocked) keel. When the compression is relieved, the repair cannot deal with the keel springing back into its uncompressed shape. You may want to try it without so much weight bearing on the keel. It could be that in sustaining the damage, some material was lost in the cracked area. By compressing the crack with the weight of the boat, rather than trying to fill it while 'unstressed', you are asking too much of the glass/resin repair. This is only a guess without having some more information. Chris Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 22:56:29 To:<[email protected]> Subject: catalina27-talk: Perplexing keel problem after long distance hauling Listees: I have a serious but perplexing problem resulting from the long-distance haul of my 1975 C-27. I need your advice. The boat was hauled from North Carolina to Boston in mid-July, essentially a return home for the boat and for us. Somewhere along the way the boat was damaged. When the boat arrived it was lifted off the flatbed and put in the water. It immediately began to take on water--lots of it. After taking it out of the water, we discovered a crack at the extreme aft end of the keel at the hull (at the point where the hull begins to curve down to shape the narrow end of the keel--perhaps an inch or two down that curve). The crack was only several inches long around that aft end, perhaps four inches long in all, sort of shaped like a "u". The leak showed at the inside at the extreme aft end of the bilge in the passage (under the interior deck) between it and the engine compartment (boat has an A-4). While the pump kept on top of the leak, it did so only barely. A few words about the delivery: The boat had been located on the extreme aft end of the trailer. A power boat was placed on the front. The inside of the boat was an absolute mess. Things that I had carefully stowed were strewn about the boat. Items stowed deep in the after quarter berth were all over the salon floor in the forward part of the boat. It was an amazing sight that got worse when the water seeped up from the bilge. Clearly the boat had a very rough trip. When the boat was first on stands, I was able to ply out some resin from the hull crack and thought maybe I could make a temporary patch to get it across Dorchester Bay to my yacht club. I used Marine Tex. The fix looked good, but as soon as the hydraulic trailer begin to lift it from the stands and blocks, it cracked with a "snap." It had returned. After a short haul on a hydraulic trailer to the club, I removed the broken Marine Tex, opened the crack up as best I could, and we used West (resin, filler) and some cloth and fashioned a repair. When it was sealed on the outside, using a flashlight, I was able to locate what seemed to be a crack of sorts in the bilge in that passage leading to the engine compartment, where it seemed the water had come in. I poured resin into it, hoping it would seep down. Today, when we lifted the boat off the stands to put it in the water, the same thing happened, a snap, and then a 1/8 in wide, several inch long crack appeared. This work was done by someone with a great deal of experience using West resins. What is going on? The bilge looks fine. Four years ago, I employed the Catalina Direct keel bolt upgrade and installed ss lags. I did this only as a precaution because the original bolts looked, well, rusted, but no worse than other Catalinas. My bilge has always been clean and dry. I see nothing amiss there now. There is no Catalina smile on this boat an no other external indications of a problem anywhere along the keel. Jon C-27 1858
