Repairing a rudder damaged skeg

[brownoarsman]

Good afternoon knowledgeable CF boat maintainers.

We had a bit of a nasty wind (45+ knots sustained) on the Severn the week before I was due to haul my boat which managed to untuck a bit of my furled genoa, which of course managed to untuck some more, etc. I rowed out to the boat pretty quickly, but it still took me an hour to get the headsail down, during which time the boat was subject to some pretty awful yawing. The tiller had already snapped by the time I got out there, and was lying in splinters on the cockpit floor, which meant my rudder was fishtailing during all of this and probably for a good amount of time beforehand as well. I secured the stump as best I could, but upon hauling the boat out, discovered that both the rudder and skeg had worn grooves into the underlying fiberglass. The rudder on my Pearson 28-1.2 is a spade, but partially skeg hung on a skeg that trails back from the keel stump, and it is the trailing edge of the skeg and a vertical strip on the rudder that is damaged. After having watched the west videos, I'm still unclear on whether this is a repair where I should layer some new fiberglass, or just build up with thickened epoxy. Please share your advice!

[neilpride]

Search in the fórum for a Member named Minaret, he have a wonderful topic about how to fix a rudder skeg properly with lots of pics.....

[brownoarsman]

Ahhh, thanks, Neil! As always, it's all about having the right search terms before I was getting a lot of results about kayaks and motorboats!

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...d.php?t=175344

[neilpride]

Haha glad you found it, if you have some questions you can always send it a Pm... Good luck...

[KadeyKrogen38]

The two pictures showing chip in skeg is simply an air bubble in the layup. It is very difficult to get the glass into these types of areas. You can see the fiberglass lay up on the depth of the chipped area. Simply fill with thickened polyester or epoxy and sand to shape. The rudder is another matter and needs a thorough evaluation.

[brownoarsman]

Thanks as well, Kady. The boat has been epoxy barrier coated twice but I'm not sure how thick that treatment was, so was not sure if the opaque almost dark gray/green resin over the fiberglass was that or something else. The fiberglass weave that you mention does not look damaged, just exposed. An air bubble may have been a contributing cause, but judging by damage on the rudder as well, it appears to have been chipped off by impact with the rudder at the extremes of the rudder's swing.

The rudder itself will need new bearings at some point. It groans a bit heavy after the walloping it took, but does not appear to have taken on water, thankfully.

[brownoarsman]

Hi all, I was sanding the boat for bottom paint anyways, so devoted some love and attention to the rudder. The damage does not get through to the glass fibers of the rudder, and the clearcoat here is very smooth, which is good!

Do I need to apply any covering (besides bottom paint) over this exposed resin? I googled around a bit and the answer seems to be no, but wanted to confirm. Thanks!

The skef I filled in as described by Kady.