Our keel is half lead, half foam. The front half is lead, the aft half foam. The problem with this is that the join between the two is apt to crack–the keel flexes, the yard sets it down on the foam, maybe even just sailing it, whatever did it, it cracked on us and was admitting/weeping water. (Sometime after our hull number, uniflite wised up and started making the bottom half lead, top half foam.) Down in mexico, I drilled a ton of holes into the foam, bottom and sides, in order to drain the water that was living in there. I also ground down the join so it could dry out. Also, the “smile” at the top front of the keel was weeping slightly from a crack in what I believe was the fairing compound they used. I ground this down in anticipation of drying it out and glassing over it also. In the Berkeley workyard we injected epoxy into the holes I had drilled to repair the mild delamination. Then we used knytex fiberglass fabric to glass over the join (many layers–I had gone a little overboard with the grinding). We glassed over the “smile” the same way. Then we ground down/sanded down the fiberglass fair with the hull. Then we used Quikfair (two-part epoxy fairing compound) to fair the areas smooth. Then we sanded these down fair. Then it was ready for priming before bottom painting.
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