Hopefully, it is the board that is the problem. Your sailing season in Arizona may never end, but when you are ready...make provisions to lift the boat off the trailer and drop the board out the bottom. Sand blast, epoxy/paint it and while it's out....check the inside of the trunk for any bulges. Hopefully, there will be none. If there are...it's not the end of the world but it's not pretty. The "fix" is to cut open the side of the keel, jack hammer out the existing ballast (looks like deer droppings), replace that with lead pigs, epoxy those in place and put the glass piece you cut out of the keel back in place. Mostly a job for a professional...unless you are very good at that type of work. BTW....I think the next time I paint mine, it will be with a couple coats of epoxy (freshly after sand blasting to bare metal)...followed by a two part epoxy paint....with a couple coats of bottom paint over that. We also went bobbing...errrr...sailing over the weekend. Powerboats as thick as flies on a road kill skunk. Wind varied from none to enough to make you consider reefing.....all over the span of 10 minutes or less....but mostly no wind. But plenty of boat chop. It's a known fact that a sailboat becalmed and dead in the water is an attractive nuisance for power boaters. They use you as turn around markers. All that slating puts more wear on sails in 10 minutes than a month of regular sailing might do. But it could have been worse. I could have been sitting at home like I am now! Howard On 9/6/05 10:13 AM, "Steve Shenkel" <steve@appliedphotonics.com> wrote:
Labor Day weekend bore the fruits of boat work-I was able to spend another day with my M17. One of the issues that surfaced on the first sail was the sticking centerboard. To investigate this I got some shim stock sheets of stainless approximately 6" X 15" ranging in thickness from .015" to .030" thick from work. With leather gloves, I carefully jammed these pieces of shim stock into the space between the centerboard and the inside side wall of the centerboard trunk. Working my way around the whole centerboard, I was able to free up about 80% of the area by breaking free paint chips and corrosion on the outside of the centerboard.
With a little coaxing, (tapping a .25" diameter rod through the pennant hole) I was able to get the centerboard to drop down. It would appear to have gone down most of the way, but I did not dive in to check.
The second sail was great, but the morning winds only lasted for about two hours. Then it was back to rock and roll with the powerboat chop.
Another bright note was the motor. When I purchased the boat it came with a Johnson 4.5 two stroke and a Honda 7.5 four stroke. Naturally the 4 stroke would have been my first choice, but the power and weight of the Honda looked more that the boat should have. After my first sail with the Johnson, although it worked, it sounded like it could use some help: Carburetor kit, water pump impeller, plugs, and etc. So I pulled it off and put on the Honda. I reasoned that if a bass boat can sport a 300 HP outboard, I could stretch the envelope for a few times and use a 7.5 HP four stroke. The motor worked great; quiet, powerful, and reliable. It will be a drag (perhaps literally) when I have to put the Johnson back on.
Steve Shenkel
M17 263
In Arizona
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