Refit Week 4

Hi everyone,
Work continued this week with planing of the hull continuing and repair work of the grounding damage making major progress.

Old repairs to the area forward of the keel were ground back and the underlying damage exposed.  The repairs were poorly done and were delaminating.  The area was cleaned up and new fibreglass laid up.

Hull damage forward of hull laid bare

Damage made good

Internally the keel support structure (aka the "egg crate") was strengthened with several layers of quad-axial 400 gram and chopped strand mat 400 gram (each 1mm per layer).  The area below the mast compression post was heavily reinforced with 5 layers of quad-axial 1000 gram (2.2mm per layer).

Full repaired egg-crate keel support structure

The keel was prepared for offering up next week, epoxy coating the top surface.

Keel ready to offer up

It's great to have exposed and fully repaired the original damage around the keel.  Provides confidence that this work will be a real and lasting fix to the problem!