Skeg (soundness of)

[paul.paul]

I've been thinking of trying to buy a Sabre. One I looked at recently seemed to have a surprising (to me) amount of lateral flex in the skeg - but I've nothing to compare it to. There were no cracks where the skeg meets the hull and the boat hadn't been recently anti-fouled. This is all a bit vague I know but I'd be grateful for people's thoughts.

[ken endean]

Paul,
It sound as if that is a single-keel Sabre. On the twin-keeler the skeg is moulded with the hull and is very rigid. The hull for the single-keeler was moulded with a recess for the skeg moulding. Details may have changed over the production run but on one boat the flanges of the skeg moulding were bolted to the hull and glassed over. Slight movement was noticed and on opening up the joint there was some polyester filler that had cracked. Replacing it was reported to restore rigidity.

Its difficult to give more guidance but this might give you an idea of what to expect.
Cheers
Ken Endean

[Keith 66]

As Ken says, The fin keel skeg is a separate moulding that fits into a moulded recess in the hull. It is bedded on Polyester filler & secured with a ring of about 20 csk stainless steel machine screws they were glassed over on the inside & the outside join was also glassed over & faired.
Heel fitting is secured by csk machine screws into the sides plus two from underneath that are easy to miss.
The Skeg was filled with expanding foam through a hole in the hull later glassed over. On our boat they had only half filled it & left a small gap at the top rear behind the rudder shaft, this meant the skeg was literally filled with mud.
Foam always absorbs water anyway & our skeg proved to be sodden & riddled with osmosis. I ended up taking a mould off it & making a new one.
Another photo series article will be along shortly.

[paul.paul]

Thank you both for those thoughts. I didn't have any sense of there being movement at the joint and no osmosis visible. The boat I'm talking of has been out of the water for some time anyway so probably the only way to check for ingress would be to drill an exploratory hole toward the bottom ofthe skeg - but tbh I'm not really fretting about this as being a live issue, my best guess would be that a foam-filled skeg should flex just about as much as I found.

Regards,

Paul

[Keith 66]

They do flex a bit & if its not cracked anywhere should be ok. My boat had spent 20 years plus sitting in a Kent mud berth when not sailing so its not surprising the skeg was filled with mud. The osmosis was so bad i had to replace it, but as i say that boat was in poor condition when i got her.
Funny thing was the rest of the hull was pretty dry due to an expensive epoxy job in 1982.