What started as a minor gelcoat damage repair of bow damage on my '79 27' O'Day has turned into a major project. While the repairer was stripping years of bottom paint off he discovered the trailing edge of the keel was splitting / delaminating from the bottom up--about 15 vertical inches of damage. It appears the prior owner may have covered up a problem with Bondo and a lot of paint and sold the boat to me in mid-2007. I noticed when we hauled last winter that the keel seemed to be "weeping"--that it appeared to have a wet area along the bottom. Turns out the keel has a lot of wood filler (now wet and rotting) beneath the Bondo, starting from the trailing edge andmoving forward for 18" or more (he's exposed about 18", perhaps more to come) and tapering down from 15" at the rear to maybe 7" a foot forward. Does anybody know whether wood might have been used by O'Day during manufacture in 1979? The repairer states categorically he has never encountered wood in a fiberglass keel and that use of it is prohibited in any shop in which he has worked--you build up fiberglass with standard filller material, not with wood under the waterline.
What's in YOUR O'Day's keel?
- Thread starter John Dunton
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John,
The guy who you would need to talk to in our area is Rudy Nickerson of D&R Marine, Assonet Ma. http://www.drmarine.com/ He worked for O'Day years back and bought all their molds and parts when they closed up. I don't believe that O'Day ever put wood in their keels. My OD 222 has an 800 LBS lead keel. At any rate, if anyone would know it would be Rudy. He was building the OD Widgeons, the Weedender (OD 192) and the OD 240 back in the mid 90s in Bristol RI.
Joe
The guy who you would need to talk to in our area is Rudy Nickerson of D&R Marine, Assonet Ma. http://www.drmarine.com/ He worked for O'Day years back and bought all their molds and parts when they closed up. I don't believe that O'Day ever put wood in their keels. My OD 222 has an 800 LBS lead keel. At any rate, if anyone would know it would be Rudy. He was building the OD Widgeons, the Weedender (OD 192) and the OD 240 back in the mid 90s in Bristol RI.
Joe
Right Information
Thanks for your information. Rudy is definitely the "go-to" guy.
Joe--this was just the information I needed. Rudy confirmed O'Day would not have put wood as a keel filler--verifying the opinion of my fiberglass guy. Both suppose it was an earlier, amateur repairer that had a chunk out of the keel and fixed it "quick-and-dirty". Now it's "wet-and-spongy" and needs to be cut out and replaced with proper filler.
Thanks for your information. Rudy is definitely the "go-to" guy.
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