Kaimusailing

The day began early with some motivation to start the fiberglass rovings on the skegs. Sometimes you feel like it isn’t going to be a good day, so you drag your feet and nothing gets done, but nothing gets ruined. When you feel motivated, then things get done, but in this case it didn’t turn out too well.
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The problem was I was working alone and the procedure required wrapping the fiberglass roving “sandwich” around the wax paper wrapped rudder pin, then clamping three pads on each side of the skeg to hold the fiberglass in place as well as squeezing out excess epoxy resin. It was impossible to hold the pads in place and screw a C-clamp with one hand.
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It was very frustrating, but I found the hot melt glue gun useful to stick the three pads together to form one pad that had a layer of plastic so it would release from the epoxy, a layer of foam to spread the clamping pressure to the plastic, and a layer of wood so the clamps had something stiff to clamp onto. It was still difficult. The pads tended to twist as the clamp was screwed tight and the fiberglass under the pads would get distorted. The epoxy made it very easy for the fiberglass to move around on the skeg. Once again the glue gun came in handy. I glued one of the pads to the skeg just a little past the edge of the fiberglass and epoxy. The procedure was to prime the skeg with raw epoxy, but use the pad as an indicator of how far to go with the priming. Leave a little dry spot. Soak the roving sandwich in its little tray with 4.5 ounces of resin, then wrap it around from one side of the skeg to the other and around the rudder pin. The fiberglass would stay in place but tend to sag and slide slowly down, so quickly add a bead of hot melt glue at the far edge of the fiberglass, then slap a pad over it. It takes only a minute or so for the glue to begin to solidify. Then take the other pad and use it to tighten up the fiberglass sandwich. At the same time bring a clamp into position and screw it down tight. Then add a second clamp to even the pressure over the pads.
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The last pad went on the best. All the others had one thing or another go wrong and will have to be remedied after they set up and can be inspected to see how bad and how much reworking is necessary. One is missing one of the roving layers, which will have to be added later. At least one of the others slipped down from its position a bit, so it will probably need and extra bit of glass. Some of the wraps around the rudder pins didn’t stay all nice and smooth, some of the roving layers came a bit loose. Hope that can be fixed with some high density filler. Not a great job in total, but probably can be made right with another epoxy day.
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One of the boats in the yard is named Dawn Treader, as are many other boats, but unlike many of the others it has been well out to sea and the young couple who are having this adventure have a web page at http://sailingdawntreader.com/. They are doing some interesting things to the boat, a stout 30 foot double ender.
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The picture is of the sloppy glue up on the starboard skeg. You can see how the clamping pads had slipped. It actually turned out better than the port skeg.