Fixing the Centerboard

After quite a long writing break, I thought it would be good to catch up on the blog a little.  The biggest bit of news is that I finally resolved Solitude III's stuck centerboard.  

A centerboard that goes down is a sight for sore eyes!

It was an issue that plagued me for well over a year and a half.  It started after a weekend cruise, when I noticed that the centerboard seemed to drop a little less freely than before.  Things slowly worsened, and soon I was needing to open the inspection ports and push the board down using the hand of a pair of channel locks.  It kept taking more and more force until, on day, it would not go down.

My first suspicion was that there was some flotsam jamming the board, but on inspection, I could find none. One day I dropped the boat into the water, pulled out all the ballast, secured a line to the masthead and hauled her over onto her side. I then waded into the water and set to work. Between prying with a screwdriver and applying excessive force, I managed to get the board ALL the way down. The was a little bit of seaweed and the like on the board and in the trunk, but nothing major. I cleaned it as best I could. I then tried running the board back in. Still very, very jammed. 

After eliminating lodged debris as a cause for my centerboard woes, I determined that there had to be  some water intrusion that was causing swelling.   The question was whether it was on the centerboard side or the trunk side.  It was getting toward the end season, so I parked the boat jacked it up slightly off the trailer and let it spend the next five months out of the water, airing out. 

After quite some time, I launched the boat and tried it again.  Still stuck.  From there, between the discouragement of having a stuck centerboard and having a total lack of time to actually make progress, things bogged down.

Careen-at-the-Dock

Finally, I got serious.  I built a new centerboard, and re-careened the boat.  Out came the old board, in went the new.  Except it didn't.  Stuck.  This time I came armed with diagnostic tools, namely a few sticks of varying thickness from less that 3/4 inch (the thickness of the centerboard) up to 1 inch (the original width of the trunk).  I probed carefully and determined that the wood at the bottom of the centerboard trunk had swollen.

The root cause of the problem was that, in my rush to finish the boat, I sanded through the epoxy/fiberglass in the neighborhood of the centerboard slot and didn't reseal it. The breach in the epoxy was just at the bottom of the keel, so water was getting lapped up via the "endgrain" edge of the plywood. The one "for sure" spot that I found was about `at the midpoint of the centerboard slot lengthwise, and actually on the outboard edge of the keel. I have been known to be a flagrant violator of maxims such as "always keep your sander flat against the surface" and "don't use a power sander on edges," and in this case, I was roundly punished for my transgressions.

After consultation with John Harris, I decided to strip the paint in the area, apply liberal doses of epoxy to seal it, repaint, and replace the centerboard with a 1/2" one covered with two layers of 'glass.  In addition to patching and resealing the one clearly obvious spot, I also overreacted and hit everything within 2" of the centerboard slot (around the keel, and yes, up into the slot) with several coats of epoxy.

You don't want to do this to your boat if you can avoid it.

For the resealing of the slot, I was able to jack the boat up off the trailer far enough to gain access. I used the careen-at-the-dock procedure to get access to the board for installation and removal.

After I got her back together, re-rigged, and in the water last night, I raised and lowered the board.  Smooth as could be.  I took her out for a brief test cruise, but the wind forgot to show up. It wasn't until a week later that I had another chance to go sailing.  The trip took me across from Coupeville to Port Townsend to sail by the Wooden Boat Festival (which I had not registered for, since I did not know I'd have an operational boat in time), but that's a story for another time.

Under Sail Again!

Unchain My Heart (Or At Least My Centerboard)

To quote Dr. Henry Jones, Sr., "this is intolerable."  With the days getting longer and the weather turning finer, being precluded from sailing by Solitude III's jammed centerboard is becoming increasingly annoying.  Thus, fixing this problem has scaled my priority list with astounding alacrity.

I made my first attempt to fix the centerboard just over a week ago.  My goal was to check for any debris that might be jamming the board.  My original plan had been to careen the boat, and thinking it through all winter, I couldn't come up with a better idea.  But then, just a few days before I was ready to make my attempt, I realized that maybe I could get sufficient access just by heeling the boat over dockside.

Solitude III with all or her ballast and gear removed.

So, I dropped the boat into the water, pulled out the internal ballast, anchor, and other gear, secured a line to the masthead and hauled her over onto her side. I figured that with the 200 lbs of internal ballast removed,  I would be able to get to boat on to her side without any additional tackle.  Well, I was wrong, and that 100lbs of ballast cast into her keel kept her on her feet.  Fortunately, while I was struggling, a nice couple came by and lent a hand.  Soon, we had a 2:1 tackle rigged and between the three of us, got the boat heeled over to where her portlights just kissed the water.  The bottom of the centerboard trunk was still about 2" under water, but it was close enough.

In the end, she was actually heeled over a little more. 

With the boat on here side, I waded into the water and set to work. Between prying with a screwdriver and applying excessive force, I managed to get the board all the way down. The was a little bit of seaweed and the like on the board and in the trunk, but nothing major. I cleaned it as best I could. I then tried running the board back in. Still stuck. In fact, it was a pretty big struggle to get the board all the way back in the trunk.  Well, that was enough for one day.

The sticky centerboard is visible just beneath the water's surface

In my mind, I've eliminated lodged debris as a cause for my centerboard woes. So, it's likely that there was some water intrusion into either the centerboard or the centerboard trunk that caused the wood to swell.  I didn't really investigate it closely enough at the time, so I don't know whether it's on the board side of the hull side, though on reflection, I'm leaning toward the latter. If it was the board, I would have expected that spending a 5 months out of the water would have dried it out a little. On the other hand, the bottom of the centerboard trunk sits in direct contact with the keel trough on the trailer. Despite the cover on the boat, I can easily see the carpeting on the keel trough being continually damp throughout a rainy Pacific Northwest winter, and (assuming the not-unlikely scenario that the epoxy got sanded through somewhere around the centerboard trunk opening) water wicking up and into the sides of the centerboard trunk.

As far as next steps go, I'm planning on trying to get some ventilation going in the centerboard trunk and see if that helps.  I will then dunk the boat again and (unless the problem has magically gone away), do some more careful measuring and diagnosis.   More to come.

Centerboard of Doom

The past few times I've have taken Solitude III out, I noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to get the centerboard to go up or down.  I had to resort to opening up the inspection hatches and using a combination of fingers, screwdrivers, and the handles of a pair of pliers to apply what could gently be described as a flabbergasting amount of excessive force to get the board down.  Finally, the last time I had the boat out, no amount of persuasion was successful in getting the board down.

Diagnoses of the problem has proven problematic at best.  I've tried using a mirror to look down into the trunk to see what's going on, but I can't see the problem...or much of anything. I've also tried looking up from underneath, but most of the centerboard slot is covered up by the keel trough on the trailer.

Right now, the sandy shores of Jetty Island are the leading contender of a beaching site.

My current plan is to careen the boat, pull her down onto her side, and see if I can get a good look at what's going on.  Doing this will require the right combination of free time, weather, tides, and daylight.  This time of year, getting the right combination of those things isn't easy.  So, for now, I wait.


Unless someone has a forklift, Travelift, or other contraption I could borrow...