Hello,
I am new to sailing and purchased a swing keel 1975 Catalina 22 with trailer in September of 2020. The previous owner had the boat for 20 years. He used her in fresh water for day trips on a lake in Pennsylvania. It stayed at the lake in dry storage on the trailer and ready to sail. The mast and sails were dismantled during the winter months and the boat was tarped. For the last 5 years it was not used due to health reasons so it sat at the lake in dry storage under tarp. Due to neglect it had quite a bit of water in it. I removed all the water and did a quick clean up, stepped the mast and was able to take it out about 6 times before winter and she sailed fine. I did not lower the keel under sail as I know it has had zero maintenance for those last 20 years and wanted to avoid any possible keel related problems on the water.
She is now in my garage off the trailer and the learning has begun. There are a some soft spots in the deck that I will eventually get to and lots of the hardware needs to be replaced and or resealed. There are the expected cracks in the gel coat throughout the boat inside and out but overall the boat is pretty solid. I started by stripping all the hardware off including the ports/windows.
Next thing I did was drop the keel and started to remove the many coats of paint and rust. I purchased all the parts to refit the keel hardware including winch, cable, Hose and clamps with ball, the two support castings, the pivoting pin, centering kit, SS bushing for keel, cable attachment hardware, locking bolt assembly and 4 weldments since two of the bolts broke as I was dropping the keel. The two forward bolts snapped even though I soaked them for days with penetrating oil. All of the keel hardware appears factory so not a surprise.
I did see some minor gel coat cracks in the area around the old castings and it looked like some minor surface repair was made at one point going up into the trunk. Inside the hull I removed the fiberglass so I could expose and remove the weldments. I also cut away fiberglass and removed the locking bolt and support strap as it was froze rusty and bent where it made contact with the keel. I also saw that the wood support under the compression post built into the Dinette was saturated with water and rotted, so I cut away the glass and removed the rotted wood as well. Although I never sailed and have no experience I spent lots of time reading and nothing I saw seemed unexpected or out of place for the year of the boat.
Everything went pretty well until it came to removing the weldments. Once I removed the fiberglass to expose the weldments I noticed that one of them (the port forward one) appeared to have voids in the fiberglass around it. I lightly probed the voids with an awl and there were more voids than I wanted to see which appear to be factory. I had a very hard time getting the weldments out. I was able to take 3 of them out mostly by drilling them out but during the process (the one with voids in the fiberglass) has a substantial crack in the fiberglass now that goes up into the trunk about 3 inches or so and needs what looks to me some major fiberglass repair done. I have not been able to find any documentation regarding how to approach this type of damage. I have been told that since it is fiberglass it can be repaired however no one has been able to point me to any documented methods. I have several ideas as to how I would approach but since I lack experience especially with fiberglass I thought this might be a good place to check. Sorry for the long post but wanted to be thorough. Has anyone here ever had to make such a repair? Thanks in advance to anyone that might be able to offer advice!
I am new to sailing and purchased a swing keel 1975 Catalina 22 with trailer in September of 2020. The previous owner had the boat for 20 years. He used her in fresh water for day trips on a lake in Pennsylvania. It stayed at the lake in dry storage on the trailer and ready to sail. The mast and sails were dismantled during the winter months and the boat was tarped. For the last 5 years it was not used due to health reasons so it sat at the lake in dry storage under tarp. Due to neglect it had quite a bit of water in it. I removed all the water and did a quick clean up, stepped the mast and was able to take it out about 6 times before winter and she sailed fine. I did not lower the keel under sail as I know it has had zero maintenance for those last 20 years and wanted to avoid any possible keel related problems on the water.
She is now in my garage off the trailer and the learning has begun. There are a some soft spots in the deck that I will eventually get to and lots of the hardware needs to be replaced and or resealed. There are the expected cracks in the gel coat throughout the boat inside and out but overall the boat is pretty solid. I started by stripping all the hardware off including the ports/windows.
Next thing I did was drop the keel and started to remove the many coats of paint and rust. I purchased all the parts to refit the keel hardware including winch, cable, Hose and clamps with ball, the two support castings, the pivoting pin, centering kit, SS bushing for keel, cable attachment hardware, locking bolt assembly and 4 weldments since two of the bolts broke as I was dropping the keel. The two forward bolts snapped even though I soaked them for days with penetrating oil. All of the keel hardware appears factory so not a surprise.
I did see some minor gel coat cracks in the area around the old castings and it looked like some minor surface repair was made at one point going up into the trunk. Inside the hull I removed the fiberglass so I could expose and remove the weldments. I also cut away fiberglass and removed the locking bolt and support strap as it was froze rusty and bent where it made contact with the keel. I also saw that the wood support under the compression post built into the Dinette was saturated with water and rotted, so I cut away the glass and removed the rotted wood as well. Although I never sailed and have no experience I spent lots of time reading and nothing I saw seemed unexpected or out of place for the year of the boat.
Everything went pretty well until it came to removing the weldments. Once I removed the fiberglass to expose the weldments I noticed that one of them (the port forward one) appeared to have voids in the fiberglass around it. I lightly probed the voids with an awl and there were more voids than I wanted to see which appear to be factory. I had a very hard time getting the weldments out. I was able to take 3 of them out mostly by drilling them out but during the process (the one with voids in the fiberglass) has a substantial crack in the fiberglass now that goes up into the trunk about 3 inches or so and needs what looks to me some major fiberglass repair done. I have not been able to find any documentation regarding how to approach this type of damage. I have been told that since it is fiberglass it can be repaired however no one has been able to point me to any documented methods. I have several ideas as to how I would approach but since I lack experience especially with fiberglass I thought this might be a good place to check. Sorry for the long post but wanted to be thorough. Has anyone here ever had to make such a repair? Thanks in advance to anyone that might be able to offer advice!
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