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Broken keel winch mounting

3K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  Barquito 
#1 ·
The bridge deck cracked on my Catalina 22. The keel winch mounts to the under side of the bridge deck. The winch supports the 500 lb keel, and probably gets overtightened occasionally. My question is how do I go about repairing the support (bridge deck) to remount the keel winch? My first thought is to through bolt a couple aluminum or steel plates on each side.
 
#2 ·
On my first boat, a Venture 24 with swing keel, the keel winch was supported by roughly 2 x 6 piece of oak in the cockpit. The ends extended over onto the cockpit seats for support. A temporary fix for you would possibly be to do the same, and use longer bolts to thru bolt this external wood support through the normal fiberglass support area for the winch.
 
#3 ·
The bridge deck supports a little less than half the weight, the rest is on the pivot pin. I would rebuild it from below. As I recall from my 22 that isn't too bad an area to reach. You need to grind off all the gelcoat/paint they slapped on under there. I have found that the little 2" diameter rubber backed pads mounted in a pistol drill work quite well for this. Use the 24 grit ones. Not as fast as a 4" grinder, but you find that dust control is a REALLY big issue with a grinder! Think, take absolutely everything out of the boat and plan on vacuuming and wiping every square inch afterward!

A shop vac with a bag filter and holding the nozzle close does a pretty good job of getting most of the dust.

I'd use some 18 ounce woven roving and epoxy resin. Roll out the resin on the cloth then slap the cloth up against the deck using rubber gloves. Work with small pieces, maybe 8" square at the most and keep building it up. One layer is about 0.030" so you are probably going to need about ten layers. or so.

Hope this helps.
 
#4 ·
Gary, why would one modify/repair the pivot pin area if there was no damage there?...from the original post, he said that the bridge deck cracked (a sign of overtightening the winch according to our C22 manual). Inspecting the pivot pin area would be in order to see if perhaps it was damaged....if not, it seems to me that the repairs would be in the bridge deck area....something quick and dirty like I suggested, or refiberglassing the bridge deck area with perhaps some metal reinforcement for an improved/permanent fix.
 
#5 ·
I think that is what Gary was describing. He just pointed out that the keel winch doesn't really take the full 500 lb of keel, but only about 50% of that because is is supported on both ends.

NCC320, I like your idea of reinforcing with metal. I will repair the fiberglass then add a plate on top and bottom. Maybe an angle iron or two on the bottom.

I think the problem we have had with our keel is that we get lake weeds caught on the cable. When we raise the keel is is difficult to determine when the keel is up because is doesn't come to a hard stop, it just squishes the weeds. Next thing we know we are cranking on the winch too hard (crunch).
 
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