Lots of boats get these smiles. My Brother's pristine and babied C&C 29 MKII has one. You can get it a bunch of different ways, and some boats get abused and never get it. The real problem is that you have a highly loaded joint that is difficult (if not impossible) to make structurally efficient without eating up half the cabin and bisecting your bilge. That joint goes between two materials that behave very differently under load and temperature, and the two pieces probably didn't fit together very well in the first place. The joint and the material differences lead to differential flexing, and flexing leads to cracks. Everything you put on the outside bottom of the boat (gelcoat, filler, bottom paint, etc.) does not handle tension well.
Keith Sneddon #4760, "Are We There Yet"? ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Shugarts Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 5:52 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: catalina27-talk: Dry Sailing a Catalina 27 When I had the C-25 I thought that way, too. I had this partner, and he would take the boat out and hit things. One time he hit a whistle buoy dead-on, and blamed it on his (soon to be ex-) wife not getting the spinnaker down quick enough. Anyway, he dragged our keel across about five rocks and I figured whatever happened to the keel was his doing. But then I looked around the boat yards and found perfectly well kept Catalina keels, but with the smile. Then I realized that our boat yard for the C-25 had a bunch of Neanderthals (I don't want to name names, but Captain's Cove in Bridgeport, CT) and they never did anything special to block the keel. When I got to the C-27 and a club situation, our club has a very experienced, careful person who leads the land crew at haulout and he already knew to block the forward end. Font? --Dave S. On 4/9/08 3:38 PM, "tim ford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I was always under the impression that the "smile" was more a function of > stresses encountered when under sail, e.g., falling off a wave in a big > chop or piling on a bunch of canvas and racing in 25 kn, that kind-o-thing. > > Certainly seems that a lotta weight on keel sumps (that went thru a range of > building conditions and materials) is likely to cause significant > flexxing in breezier conditions and it seems like this would be the > source of keel joint separation, rather than the way the boat is blocked up > for the off-season. > > hey, what's with this font? > > tf > > > > David Shugarts wrote: >> With my C-27 and people being more careful when they set the boat on land >> each fall, we put an extra 3/4 inch, or even 1-1/2 inch underneath the >> forward end of the keel, relative to the aft end. I have had the boat eight >> years and no "smile" has developed. >> >> --Dave S. >> >> >
