michaeld
Looking for some advice on preparing the keel for another summer in the water.
When we bought her last year we did a quick antifoul job just to get her into the water as quickly as possible, but now I’m looking at her keel and thinking it could do with something more than another coat of a/f. The bottom of the keel looks a little rusty, so I don’t even know how well a/f will fix.
Can anyone suggest what we should do in terms of prep and treatment?
Also, have completely sanded the rudder and it’s looking nice – thinking about simply varnishing it above (and maybe even below the w/l) – again I’d welcome anyone’s thoughts or advice on that.
Cheers
StevenRolland
We did the same thing last year and used (don’t laugh) G4 Pond Sealer (okay you can laugh now). Apparently it used to be recommended by Hunter Boats.
It looked okay when we took it out of the water at the end of last year, a couple of spots had peeled, but I reckon this was down to not preparing it properly, as the majority was fine.
I phoned Bondaglass this year, and spoke to a nice chap, who assured me it is still suitable for the task, and recommended that you put the first coat of antifouling on within the overcoating time. He said that there was a case of it reacting with an anti-foul. But we use Blakes Tiger Xtra, and I’ve seen it work on Interational Micron with no problem.
You can also use G4 on the rudder.
As for the rust, we found that Kurust works fine.
G4 is available from garden centres, Hammerite Kurust from Halford’s or similar.