Date: 10/1/2009
Name: Tony Slotboom
email: tony.slotboom@gmail.com
subject:Keel trunk seal - gasket or silicone?
I hope I'm not asking a dumb question...What do people use for sealing the keel trunk? I had to replace my keel cable last month and haven't yet put back the cover. When I took it off, I had to slice through a copious amount of silicone to get it off.
I thought it would maybe have a gasket material, and am considering looking for some rubber to make my own. But the surface is very uneven under the wood and I think this is probably why the previous owner would have used silicone.
Not that it's THAT bad to resilicone it, but since I'm not sure how often I should expect to replace the cable (I read in older posts here that sometimes it can be a yearly task, while others are on their original cable still..), if I'm one of the ones who needs to do it more often, it would be nice to just pull the cover on and off without scraping silicone and then resiliconing it afterwards.
On a slightly related note, we noticed that in heavier winds, a fair amount of water was entering the cockpit by way of the keel pivot bolt holes. Is there any way to combat this? I was thinking of smearing some silicone into the holes but I doubt it would be very permanent. I noticed that my boat has no centreboard gasket underneath to speak of, so perhaps this is a winter project that should be undertaken (ie., put new gasket material under the boat, after figuring out a way to get the boat off the trailer to work on the underside).
Thanks!
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