Assn Members Area · Join
Home. Association Forum Ships Store Cruising Racing Technical Tips Photo Gallery - New Boat Search - Updated Manuals & Brochures Swap Meet Links Officer Flag Line & Staff Bylaws & Constitution   Members Area Join the Association   Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.	Minnie - Wing Keel Conversion Page 2 Back inside, we lowered the boat and began the work of "sanding" the bottom paint From the keel trunk and from about six inches of the boats bottom around the keel trunk. As I said. this was the toughest single job. To sand the inside of the keel trunk Mike used a circular "Scotch-brite" type of pad that rotated on the end of a 114" die grinder. He wore out eight or nine of these. A circular sanding pad for a 4' sander with 6" discs (without a backing pad so the disc would flex) was used for the boats bottom. We had thought that 80 grit paper would be more than enough, but quickly found that the 10 or so layers of bottom paint were so tough that 24 grit was all that would really do the job. Boy were we a mess, especially Mike. Throughout the sanding operation both of us wore respirators. The little white cloth masks would not have been enough with all of the fine dust that the bottom paint made. When the sanding was done. we cleaned off the sanded areas with an air nozzle and then with acetone. Now it was time to mark and then drill the bolt holes. We used the template that Catalina supplied. It is a fiberglass template that comes fitted to the new keel and has the bolt holes in just the right position. The template has a hump that fits into the keel cable hole. This anchors the template and makes marking and drilling the keel bolt holes an easy job if our drill bits are long enough. Mike ran the drill while 1 lined him up vertically from the side of the boat. The 114 inch drill bit was long enough to drill through both the top of the keel trunk and through the cabin floor. That way, we could see just where in the cabin the floor needed to be removed. Once the 1/4 inch pilot holes were in, we drilled the holes out to the recommended 3/4 inch size. This done, we both got inside the cabin and used a hole saw to cut holes in the floor over the bolt holes. Mike has a dinette model, so two of the holes were under the aft seat. One surprise that we had at this point was that the fourth hole aft was too close to the forward side of the aft seat. This meant that we had to use a jig-saw to cut an opening for the hole-saw. It was time now to get the wing keel on the trailer. But, before we did this. Mike welded a 6 inch piece of channel to the trailer as a pad for the keel to rest on. This piece extended over the three cross members on the trailer and. of course, was centered. A boom crane lifted the new keel into place on the trailer and we then lifted the boat high enough to "clear" the keel bolts. and positioned the trailer under the boat again. Continue to Page 3