Winter dagger board repair

I ran my boat up on a reef last fall and messed up one of my dagger boards. Long story, and while I knew about the reef and usually avoided it, evidently Hurricane Sandy had displaced the warning markers a couple of hundred yards. I failed to take this into account (Ouch!!). Nobody was hurt but the collision stopped the boat dead and dumped two of my passengers over the front crossbar. Below is the end result. Now, before any of you take pity on me, my friend snapped both of his Tiger dagger boards clean off on the same reef. Talk about an expensive replacement!

Anyways, with sailing season fast approaching I need to fix the board. I searched around YouTube and stumbled across this excellent step-by-step video.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqDHK0VcKTE

Does that sound about right? Here are the pictures...



Also note the moon-shaped damage about 18" up on the trailing edge, probably from the lower well.....



Lastly, for my cat sailing friends, Gill has some nice clearance deals going right now (e.g., $39 spray tops and bouyancy aids)...

http://gillna.com/c-90-clearance-dinghy.aspx

Cheers!

Be carefully with those instructions. Those are for a solid plastic daggerboard bad gte H18 boards are foam core fiberglass construction. I am not an expert on how to repair them, my expertese is on how to damage them. I have one blade that dropped down into gravel while on the trailer going to the boat ramp. I did not have time to do a proper repair and just gobbed on marine text similar to a previous repair to the board. It is not pretty but it has worked for awhile. Make sure the foam is good and dry before you repair by any method.

In my opinion, there is one major flaw with that guy's repair process - he never tied the repair plys into the existing fiberglass skin material. The only thing holding his repair to the board are a couple finish nails tapped into the core and the adhesive strength of the polyester resin right along the repair interface. I would not be surprised if it failed after one good whack, or maybe even under normal sailing conditions.

I recently had damage to my dagger board from running aground that was almost identical to yours. I'll try to summarize my repair process.

- Use a small flat screwdriver to pick out all the loose core and skin material.
- Laminate several pieces of cloth (I used 18oz woven roving) on a piece of wood to make a small flat panel about 1/16" thick.
- Use a dremel tool with a cut off wheel to open up a grove down the center of the board in the damaged area.
- Cut the flat panel to fit down into the grove about 3/8" deep and match (roughly) the shape of the damaged area.
- Fit the panel into the board and drilled through the board and panel with 3/16" drill in four locations along the panel. Masked off the dagger board.
- Epoxied the panel into the board and then put #10 machine screws into the 3/16" holes and tightened them down to clamp the dagger board and repair panel together.
- After the epoxy was about 70% cured, pulled the machine screws out of the board.
- Once the epoxy fully cured, you now have a very rigid panel in the middle of the board to work with. Use a file to shape the panel to match the desired outline of the board. Rough sand the side surfaces of the board to take out any loose material or high spots.
- Use the dremel tool or 80 grit paper to grind back the gelcoat and fiberglass on the surface of the dagger board at least 1" beyond the damaged area.
- Mix up Formula 27 putty to smooth out damaged area. Sand to rough shape after it cures. This should be lower than the final skin height to allow for the application of fiberglass plys and to finish sand.
- Cut two plys per side of 6oz fiberglass cloth to the approximate shape of the damaged area. Using polyester resin, laminate the repair plys to the board, they should extend at least 1" beyond the damage into the board.
- Lightly sand the fiberglass repair patches after cured (do not sand through the patches!). The outline should match the final profile of the board.
- Mix up another batch of Formula 27, spread over the repair area and then finish sand after cured.
- Gelcoat, paint, or leave as is.

sm

Super helpful as always, srm, thank you very much. I'm glad I asked first.

_________________
Jeff
1986 Hobie 18 #13031

The above repair is very similar to the one in the youtube video of the original post - the guy did not tie the repair into the skins of the board at all, it is only glued to the core. This provides for a much weaker repair than the original construction and this is made evident by the fact that the guy states right at the beginning of his repair instructions that he was repairing the board for the second time and that it broke cleanly at the site of his original repair. Obviously his original repair was not up to the task.

If you want to do a proper, long lasting repair, you need to use fiberglass and that fiberglass needs to be tied into the original fiberglass skins. That means beveling back (taper sanding) the gelcoat and fiberglass a sufficient distance from the site of the damage and then overlapping your glass patches over the original board material and the repair material.

sm