5/4/3 

No updates in a while, last year it went into the water,  and started sinking.   Fairly slowly, so I took a devil may care attitude and sailed it all summer.    Had a blast.   No racing, or big trips, started by going through the Duluth harbor, out the superior entry, then back.  Later I started circling park point.    It is much better to be on the lake than in the harbor, there are no worries about depth on the lake, and the wind is better.   Few pictures exist of this time.  

I was really impressed with the way the boat sailed, it was nice and quick, and pointed fairly high.  My favorite game was to pick another boat on about the same heading as me, and see if I could out speed them.  Most of the time it wasn't a problem.   

The bilge pump was very important in this time, and a lot of work was put into making this work.    It was mostly a matter of plumbing and pump sizing.   Initialy I used the water line, a T and a check valve and went out the sink drain.  This worked for a while, but the sink would start filling and not drain.  When I would return to the boat on friday the sink would be full, but the bilge empty.   Then I found the through-hull on the starboard side in the locker before the head.   That worked a lot better but the pump I was using did not have the umph to push the water up that far, so I went to a larger pump.  

Two spots were a source of trouble.  one was under the electrical panel, water seeped in slow enough that a sponge could keep up with it, but it was not an obvious spot, as there is not much going on there.  I have yet to do much in that area but grind away my putty and fiberglass that I used to fix the area.  

The other spot was the bilge, the area above the ballast in the keel.   It was not obvious where the water was coming in, rather just "down there"   When the boat came out of the water in the fall it was obvious, as the couple of gallons of water that were in the bilge that the pump could not get came leaking back out.   These areas have been ground down, and will be re glassed.    Also, I noticed more water seemed to come in when I was heeled over, ( or it just flipped the switch on the pump) so I am undergoing a campaign to strengthen the keel as well.   I try to live by the hippocratic oath of not doing any harm, so hopefully I can get this back up better than before.

I didn't thumbnail the pictures, and they are large.  Click on the description to see each

Here is a picture of the keel from the outside, taken from about the port forward quarter.  On the left, you can see  where most of the water was coming out, where the fiberglass meets the ballast.  and the large sanded area is where there was some crazing under the paint.  I went down as far as the crazing.  This area is now a tad bigger, but you get the idea.  With a halogen work light shining inside, the grey/yellow area has an eerie orange glow on dark night.  It is creepy on a couple levels.  Here is the starboard side, which wasn't as bad.   The small area with the ballast behind it was a blister, in about the same spot on both sides.

Here is the area I was shining the work light, or the keel from the inside.  I think it takes some balls to take a sawzall to the bottom of one's boat, but, I think it will be better for it.  The picture is a little dated, the cut goes back to about my toe now.   The area underneath the cut area was supposed to be a water tank, but I wouldn't have drank out of there.  Notice the two dark spots in the cut on the starboard side, it started oozing some thick brown stuff like pine tar.  Did water penetrate to cause this?   I cut back to about even with my toe, should I go all the way? The plan is to put a bunch of glass from the floor down into the bilge, and  a 2x like a bulkhead down in the hole and another 2x across the top, and put a piece of ply hinged to the area on the left of the picture, where the compression post rests so the floor will be a little higher and level.