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The Jaico Colin Archer comes with wooden coamings made from tropical hardwood. The are, I suppose, entirely ornamental. However, they are thightend against the ingress of water with black silicone caulking. The caulking gets unsettled over time and water collects under the wood in the midship section where the deck has its low point. This wet underside of the wooden boards makes the boards bending up and collecting dirt beneath them. The main technical problem is that the screws holding the railing post’s might corrode over time and it might be very difficult to remove the stumps in the railing posts. I think the sound way to repair this is to remove the complete railings, clean them underneath, maybe straighten the coaming boards and put them back in place with proper caulking and maybe stainless bolting. A little space to enable drying out any water would be helpful. A fine six weeks job… What are you experience on this?

John came up with some questions concerning the keel construction and the ballast. He found lead ballast under a GRP horizontal bulkhead (like floor I suppose) with free space before the mast and under the motor. I had a repair at my keel last summer (see album “Keel Repair”). The previous owner must have run aground and did a bad polyester repair job. After here first winter on the hard a continuous drip of water occurred under the keel. But since she hadn’t had any problems staying afloat I put her in the water nevertheless. I had no problems, except from some nail biting while armchair-sailing her. 2019 I took her out again and she was on the hard all the time during the pandemic until September 2021. I opened the Keel and discovered that her keel is in-fact a watertight enclosure between the hull and a horizontal bulkhead/floor. Even though my keel was not watertight, no water came into the cabin and the buoyancy was not compromised. A very safe construction! The ballast of my boat consists of a material like gravel. It smelled like grinding steel. Maybe it’s iron ore. The hole in my keel was only small, so no ballast was lost. The room under my motor was used for a nice fuel tank. But this tank was badly built and the keel filled with rain water (I think this is a special problem of our boat with all this horizontal surfaces). The tank got corroded with pinholes at its bottom. (This led to a blocked fuel line just 1 nm west of Noup Head / Westray / Orkney. I remember the lighthouse above us quite vividly…). She got a new tank built into the old one while wintering in Stromness. The new tank is much smaller now but is constructed much better (with a removable lid and a defined low point to remove any water). I found some concrete with slabs of steel cemented in under my cabin floor. I don’t like this inside ballast: 1. I have no bilge or defined low point to remove any bilge water. The foot of my mast is standing in pool of water which is bad. 2. In a roll-over the concrete slab might come loos and cause some damage 3. I can’t reach the keel bulkhead to build tanks into the keel. I’m interested what you found under your floorboards. Especially how the foot of your masts is constructed. Cheers, Gerd

Gerd Finger <gerd.finger@...> added the album Keel repair : A puddle of foul yellowish water was forming under the keel when the boat was on the hard… The previous owner obviously run aground. The problem was, that water was dripping out slowly but continuously. The keel was repaired by building a plug, similar to dental crown. The gluing surface was prepared, the dental crown formed and cured in place, and immediately before gluing in the crown the water was stopped for some seconds by using some tampons… . The finish is glas matting, glas bubble putty, epoxy coating, and anti fouling.