When I had the C-25 I thought that way, too. I had this partner, and he
would take the boat out and hit things.
One time he hit a whistle buoy dead-on, and blamed it on his (soon to be
ex-) wife not getting the spinnaker down quick enough.
Anyway, he dragged our keel across about five rocks and I figured whatever
happened to the keel was his doing. But then I looked around the boat yards
and found perfectly well kept Catalina keels, but with the smile.
Then I realized that our boat yard for the C-25 had a bunch of Neanderthals
(I don¹t want to name names, but Captain¹s Cove in Bridgeport, CT) and they
never did anything special to block the keel. When I got to the C-27 and a
club situation, our club has a very experienced, careful person who leads
the land crew at haulout and he already knew to block the forward end.
Font?
--Dave S.
On 4/9/08 3:38 PM, "tim ford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I was always under the impression that the "smile" was more a function of
> stresses encountered when under sail, e.g., falling off a wave in a big
> chop or piling on a bunch of canvas and racing in 25 kn, that kind-o-thing.
>
> Certainly seems that a lotta weight on keel sumps (that went thru a range of
> building conditions and materials) is likely to cause significant
> flexxing in breezier conditions and it seems like this would be the
> source of keel joint separation, rather than the way the boat is blocked up
> for the off-season.
>
> hey, what's with this font?
>
> tf
>
>
>
> David Shugarts wrote:
>> With my C-27 and people being more careful when they set the boat on land
>> each fall, we put an extra 3/4 inch, or even 1-1/2 inch underneath the
>> forward end of the keel, relative to the aft end. I have had the boat eight
>> years and no "smile" has developed.
>>
>> --Dave S.
>>
>>
>
