Fiberglass repair near keel

[ironworker]

I am remodeling a 1970 Newport 30 and the weather has finally decided to break from 90 deg days so I got started on the hull. She is a hurricane salvage and the ins. co. drilled 2 holes in the hull for drainage. 1 is just forward and starboard of where the prop shaft goes through the hull, only 1/4" think and no problem to grind out to a bevel and fix. The second hole is near the front of the keel about 5" to starboard. The pics will show what I found when I started to grind it out. It appears to be a seam that I am assuming is part of the keel. The glass is an inch thick and I do not have room to grind the bevel to a 12 to 1 slope. I guess I need to know how the keel is attached and how I should go about fixing this hole.

[mitiempo]

May be a seam but it is intact. I'd glass it with a few layers of biax and epoxy and fill the hole from the inside with thickened epoxy after the outside has set. Maybe 1 layer of biax on the inside after that.

[ironworker]

There is more glass beyond the 1" in the pic and my thought was to cut out some of the cabin sole and bevel and repair from the inside as well. I need to cut the sole out to get to the rest of the bilge anyway because it is FULL of a sandy, oily, stinky mess.

[mitiempo]

That sounds like a good plan.

[deniseO30]

Looks like a encapsulated keel. like mine. the keel is FG and the ballast is inside of it.

maybe you could use the hole for a bilge drain too. installa a bronze thru hull with plug so you can drain it in winter... just sayin..

[ironworker]

Denise, it comes up through the floor about 6" aft of the bulkhead at the head / v berth. They managed to miss the bilge with that hole. I did consider underwater lighting in the aft hole but upon some research I discovered that a 1" hole was going to be about 3/4" too big.