laying cloth on bottom of bilge keels

[Rhylsailer99]

i was thinking of using duct tape to hold the cloth on both sides so it does not droop and have excess cloth with no epoxy wetting that i will sand away once it goes off.
does this sound like a good idea or a bad idea.

 

[jwfrary]

Masking tape up the edges of the cloth (over size) and use peel ply over the repair. Makes finishing off after loads easier. Just trim the excess cloth after.

 

[neil_s]

I think you'll need something to hold the wet cloth up to the base of the keels - old kitchen work top comes to mind.

 

[Stemar]

Presumably, the keels are GRP and worn through the gelcoat on the bottom, Jissel's were like that. I just wetted out the cloth and brought it up around the sides an inch or so. Much better adhesion that way. Since I park on the mud and often dry out on sand and stuff, I put several layers and the final layer was fairly coarse stuff. 15 years later, there's no serious wear, so maybe I overdid it a bit, but I quite like stronger than necessary for things like that

If you're bothered, you could fair the edges in, but I didn't. On a serious racing yacht, it might matter, but I doubt you'd notice the difference on many boats with encapsulated bilge keels. A friend with another Snapdragon reshaped the keels to make them proper foils and swore it made a difference. Not sure a Snappy really goes fast enough for that to work, but I have wondered if winglets on the outside of the keels would help to windward. I never did it because she sits in the mud for a couple of hours every tide, so lots of stress sinking in and lifting out.