O'Day 25 Shoal Draft Centerboard Water Leak

[jmallett]

So I have epoxyed in my assembly which gives me about 1 1/2 inches of thread and all is good in that regard.
My next task was to paint the inside of the slot with anti-fouling. For that I attached a mini roller to a thin slat of wood and started painting. All went well until I got to a point about halfway back where the roller jammed in the slot. I got the roller out easily enough however this tells me that the slot is narrower at that point. I don't think that should happen, so I think that you are right. Water in there may have frozen and forced the fiberglass skin away from the ballast. This may explain why I have had issues with the centerboard getting jammed.
When I put the c/b back I will get a better idea of the clearance.
Has anyone else seen this kind of problem? and is there anything that could be done about it?

 

[Project_Mayhem]

I've read that the ballast is lead ingots with some sort of filler in the keel. Has any work been done to your centerboard in the past? Perhaps whomever worked on it last made it a bit wider than it shouldve been?

 

[jmallett]

The centerboard is good. I have had it out, repaired some dings, and painted it with anti-fouling.
The problem is the width of the slot. It has a narrow spot halfway back.

 

[jmallett]

So the story continues. The pennant line for raising the centerboard us connected to the board by a shackle and an eye splice in the line. When putting everything back and testing it the c/b jammed up again. The slot has plenty of clearance now and can be manually pushed up from below, so I suspected the line was the problem.

The eye splice was made with a taper to it so the splice was jamming up into the tube through which the line runs. To solve this I cut the splice off and connected the line with a knot which is too big to fit into the hole.
Now it works just fine. I may wrap the knot with heat shrink tape.
All's well that ends well