Swing Keel Pivot Pin Question

[Seahorse24]

I have attached a photo of the pivot pin. The swing keel was removed nine years ago and the pin was replaced, and then the boat stayed in the water the next 7 years. We purchased the boat and it has been in dry dock the last two years. My son and I are trying to restore the boat so we can learn how to sail.

I have two questions.

1. Does the pin and hole appear to be normal and okay as is?

2. Should we fiberglass over the pivot pin holes before we apply the new barrier coats next Spring?

My son and I are new at this and we are learning as we go. We hope to get our Yankee Seahorse 24 in the water by next Spring.

Thank you for your help.

Jim

 

[rgranger]

Looks good. Is that the keel or the keel trunk we are looking at?

I didn't understand question #2. If you glass over the hole, how can you get the pin back in?

All materials age so while you have the bolt out, I'd take it to a shop and get an exact match or go to McMaster Carr online and get a new one. It is cheap insurance. That bolt has had a lot of stress placed on it over the past 9 years.

 

[Seahorse24]

Looks good. Is that the keel or the keel trunk we are looking at?

I didn't understand question #2. If you glass over the hole, how can you get the pin back in?

All materials age so while you have the bolt out, I'd take it to a shop and get an exact match or go to McMaster Carr online and get a new one. It is cheap insurance. That bolt has had a lot of stress placed on it over the past 9 years.

Thank you for your reply, rgranger. That photo is the keel trunk, not the swing keel. The boat is on a trailer and we are not sure exactly how we are going to get the swing keel out , if we have to remove it.

I have attached another photo that shows the base of the keel trunk resting on the trailer pad. The metal thing on the right holds a trailer side guide that was removed in order to get photos of the pin. The previous owner kept the boat in a slip. He told us he left the swing keel in the down position, so apparently there was not much lowering and raising of the keel those seven years. We can contact him and verify that was indeed the case.

One thing I thought about last night is getting a camera like the kind with a thirty inch long 3/8 inch flexible tube that can extend into the keel trunk to get photos of the connector, cable, and pin. We can insert the camera tube through the cable hole. Then illuminate the cavity from the bottom, where we left one trailer base board off before loading the boat onto the trailer.

I wonder if anyone has tried that kind of camera approach for inspecting the keel cavity.

 

[rgranger]

I have attached another photo that shows the base of the keel trunk resting on the trailer pad.

Ah, I see now. It is not a swing keel as much as it is a swing dagger board. You have an external keel that provides most of the ballast and the dagger board provides lateral resistance. I have a Rhodes 22 with the same set up. This is a nice set up. You don't have to worry about striking the bottom ... the dagger board just swings up if you do.

So to answer #2... you should not have to glass over the pin. On the Rhodes I have two SS plates that screw into the keel to keep the pin in place. But I guess glassing would work. It would just be hard to work on in the future. I did a complete restoration of my Rhodes hull. It was a salvaged boat. In the attached pic, you can see where I had just taken off the SS plate.

As far as inspecting your keel cable...don't know how your boat is set up but in the Rhodes, the part of the dagger board trunk that comes into the cabin has a "ridge cap" that can be removed with a few screws. With the cap off, you can inspect the line that retrieves the dagger board. On my Rhodes the ridge cap gasket must have started to leak at some point because a previous owner had glassed over the cap. I had to cut it off. I have not finished the restoration of the interior yet. I also had a few small blocks attached to the dagger board and the underside of the ridge cap... This provided some mechanical advantage when pulling up the dagger board. I could manage it with just a rope line and even my little girl can pull up the dagger board... so the blocks are kind of a cool add on.

Hope this helps.

r

 

[Seahorse24]

Ah, I see now. It is not a swing keel as much as it is a swing dagger board. You have an external keel that provides most of the ballast and the dagger board provides lateral resistance. I have a Rhodes 22 with the same set up. This is a nice set up. You don't have to worry about striking the bottom ... the dagger board just swings up if you do.

So to answer #2... you should not have to glass over the pin. On the Rhodes I have two SS plates that screw into the keel to keep the pin in place. But I guess glassing would work. It would just be hard to work on in the future. I did a complete restoration of my Rhodes hull. It was a salvaged boat. In the attached pic, you can see where I had just taken off the SS plate.

As far as inspecting your keel cable...don't know how your boat is set up but in the Rhodes, the part of the dagger board trunk that comes into the cabin has a "ridge cap" that can be removed with a few screws. With the cap off, you can inspect the line that retrieves the dagger board. On my Rhodes the ridge cap gasket must have started to leak at some point because a previous owner had glassed over the cap. I had to cut it off. I have not finished the restoration of the interior yet. I also had a few small blocks attached to the dagger board and the underside of the ridge cap... This provided some mechanical advantage when pulling up the dagger board. I could manage it with just a rope line and even my little girl can pull up the dagger board... so the blocks are kind of a cool add on.

Hope this helps.

r

Good luck on your project, rgranger. I am posting another photo I took today. I crawled under the boat and held my iPhone camer up close to the keel opening.

The brown area to the right is the pin going through the swing keel. It looks pretty good. The blue part on the bottom is one side of the fixed stub keel. The green is the carpet on the flat wood platform the stub keel rest on. My iPad only allows one photo per post so I'll post more photos later from my desktop. I have since added additional photos. I sure wish I had that internal inspection plate you mentioned.

 

[rgranger]

was there something holding the pin in place before you took these pictures?


If you have a stout tree with a low hanging limb, you can maybe jack up your boat and hang it from a tree limb using tow straps, then drop the keel a bit an look at the attachment point.

Or if you have a picnic table, lower the front of the trailer to the ground, put a table under the stern, then use the trailer jack to raise the front of the trailer, that will lift your stern and you can drop the keel a few inches to inspect the attachment point of the lift line.

You could also probably pay an auto garage $50 to lift it for you on their car lift.

You can see I built a lift for my boat. I have a lot of pics on how I did that if you are interested.


My boat is coming along. The Pic I posted earlier is several years old. Here are some more recent pics.