The picture above shows the two steel bilge boards needed for the boat stacked up along with the particle board pattern I made to check the fits etc. They are fabricated from 3/4 inch steel and believe me, these suckers are heavy! We’ll fool around with the light wood mockup to come up with a foolproof installation procedure. The last thing I need is to be fooling around with these things underneath the boat for any longer than absolutely needed. I’m going to coat them with cold galvanizing which should be OK as we sail in fresh water and she’ll live on the trailer most of the time.
I’ve also been crawling around under the boat finally sanding, coating, and anti-fouling the bilge keels and bilge board slot areas. The lead ballast is next for coating and finally anti-fouling as well.
After that, all that’s left is to install the keel bands and we’ll be ready to winch her onto the trailer once and for all.