MFG 19 Progress

well, I am in the process of reconstructing my rudder assembly. I have sanded the kick up rudder down to bare oak, and plan to stain, varnish, and uirewthane it, but the tiller and handle are history. The metal plates and fittings are probably salvageable, but I'm paying a woodworker in Texas, JB Owens, to remake the tiller and handle shim. He does great work and is very reasonable in price.

I also have questions about the proper motor, shank length, etc. Also, how about bottom prep for salt water? Mine looks a bit rough and worn. Is the keel glassed? What kind of primers and paints does anyone recommend. what's the best way to strip it down? Any help is appreciated.

All is coming together. I built a new hatch cover, repaired the motor mount, varnished the deck wood. The rudder assembly is almost complete. The bottom is blasted and being repainted. I have two frozen stay turnbuckles that need repairing. The hull needs a good buffing. I want to paint the mast. I'm going to install a lightening grounding system. Need a new 12 volt battery and a little electrical rewirong. The interior is a mess. Going to take down what's left of the headliner and paint.

Any updates?

Paul
Webmaster: sailmfg.com

Well, the boat's name has been applied thanks to BoatUS vinyl decals; she's the "Hannah Rose", after my daughter.

The rudder assembly is finished. Tiller hand and extension are attached.

I am having my Johnson 4hp short shaft stretched 5 inches, and am restoring the original on-shaft gas tank.

I have a new marine VHF radio and Garmin GPS chartplotter with depth sounding thru-hull transducer to be seated. I'm letting the pros do that. The electric system has been fully restored. I now have cabin, anchor, and running lights, a radio and tape player, and new bilge pump. Also have new battery, charger, and inverter.

I have purchased a small boat Harken furler drum and halyard swivel. I removed the foresail hanks to be able to use it. I need to seat a new chain plate behind the one for the forestay to allow room for the drum.

I am going to recut the deadlights (one is cracked, both are degraded, fragile, and scratched) from new bronze-tinted polycarbonate sheet I ordered online. I plan to reseat them without screws using SIKA 295 caulk and 209 primer. Should look spiffy. I'm also about to repaint the Burgundy racing trim around the deadlights, it's very faded and oxidized.

I have to remove and repair the foredeck hatch. It's a mess.

I repaired and remounted my weather vane yesterday. I mounted my VHF antenna on the masthead. GPS antenna will be on the pulpit rail.

Cockpit seat cushions are rezipperd and the foam steam cleaned.

So, one big problem remains, the weeping keel. Does anyone know where the voids are in the keel structure that might be holding water? There must be plenty, because it keeps entering the bilge. I think a few well-placed 1/4" holes should drain it. I'm going to try finding the voids with a magnet. I've heard the keel is iron, but it could be lead. I won't repair the damaged FG around the back of the keel unless it's dry.

I too would love to know what is/is not inside the keel. I took out the access cover and immediately saw that my keel was full of water. I used a pump to remove some of the water, but in only went down about 4 or 5 inches or so and hit a hard fiberglass surface. I then reached forward, under the flooring of the cabin, and found that the hard surface ended and there was more water. So it seemed like there is a further recess downward into the keel that is in the forward portion of the keel. But I don't know how low that goes or anything.

I'm wondering how to get the rest of the water out of there, or even if I should worry about it. I have yet to find the source of the water, but Dick Henry suggested that it is likely coming from bad floor drains. Apparently the drains in the outside (exposed) part of the cockpit go into tubing that runs inside the aft part of the cabin and to the drain hole in the stern. If that tubing is bad, and we are guessing that mine is, the water ends up inside the cabin, and pools first down into the keel.

Paul
Webmaster: sailmfg.com

Those are good thoughts. I have replaced the drain tubing for my bilge pump, since the old was rotted, but I have not checked the cockpit drain tubes that carefully. I will do so immediately.

However, I also have keel laminate damage at the lower left corner of the keel. The ballast is deformed and pitted under the glass, and the glass, which I have ground off, was macerated and delam'd. There is slow weeping from this location, so I know there is water in the keel pocket. Also, while the boat has been on the hard for a couple of months, water continues to layer in the bilge, no matter how many times I sponge it up. Maybe this is rain water from leaking tubes, as you say, but I also suspect there is a considerable amount of water not only in the keel pocket, but above it inside the outer hull, no doubt from years of accumulation by whatever cause. I expect when my electrical guy drills the hull to install the transducer, water will come gushing out...maybe.

When you tap on the keel pocket with the handle end of a screwdriver, you can detect changes in pitch which tell me there are definitely voids there without ballast. I plan to map out the keel contents using the tapping method as accurately as I can. If the keel is iron, a magnet approach may help. In either case, I will post a diagram of what I find. I plan to drill a couple of 1/4" holes into the keel at what I believe to be its lowest suspected void, just to see what happens.

I don't believe water in the keel itself is such a big problem, unless it hides a leak large enough to sink the boat, or except as it may point to other problems needing repair. After all, water ballast keels work fine. Still, rusting of ballast is a big concern, so I prefer mine dry.

I have puchased a "Little Giant" submersible pump that runs on shore 115v AC, placed in the aft subspace, to keep her afloat while docked. I am a pessimist about old boats, and assume they will sink if left to their own devices. The pumps are on sale right now for about $70, a good deal.

Stay tuned.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2008 05:01PM by Vauxia.

I checked the drain tubing on my boat. There were no leaks for the potion of the tubing that I was able to see. It runs back into the aft cockpit crawl space (under the cockpit). I decided to remove the tubing. I took the clamps off the two cockpit floor drains and tugged on the tubing. Well, it came out very easily from the hole where it goes into the transom, so I suspect it was not hooked to anything in there. We already know that the MFG 19 is two fabricated shells - the outside hull and the rest that forms the cockpit and cabin. Now I suspect those shells have a space in the transom and that space also extends under the cabin floor to the keel. I am convinced that the water was flowing from the drains in the floor of the cockpit, through the tubing, into a gap in the transom and down into the keel! Although this is still conjecture on my part.

Upon further examination, I found that there is a cover on the inside of the transom at the very back of the crawl space. This cover looks exactly like the cover for the portholes for the MFG Sidewinder, so it must be from the factory! Do any of you have this cover? Have you ever removed it? What is in there? I cannot get to it because my boat is on the trailer (not yet seaworthy) and I will have to build a support for the stern otherwise the whole trailer will tip up if I crawl back there and put so much weight aft. That is my next project: an external support mechanism for the stern of the boat to be used when it is on the trailer.

I'm still debating if I am going to keep the factory "fur" lining for the inside of the cabin (it seems I only need to glue it in place) or replace it or remove it entirely. It is not in all that bad shape, although it looks very 1970ish.

Paul
Webmaster: sailmfg.com

Paul, I am going out to the boatyard shortly, and I will check for this cover on my 19. If it can be removed, I will do so and report back later.

I have purchased some new smooth plastic tubing and plan to rerun all drainage tubes, so I need to explore the crawlspace.

I continue to drip-drip-drip from the keel bottom, although my bilge is now dry. A friend suggests I apply some heat to the keel to force the water out, rather than drill holes randomly. After sounding the keel pocket, it appears that the ballast sits in the bottom 6-8inches from front to back, and is void above it. I agree that this space is continuous with the space between the inner and outer hulls, including probably the transom.

I replaced the port deadlight today with 1/8" lexan. I got a 4 x 2 foot sheet on the internet for about $70. The old acrylic was cracked, but adequate to use as a template for the new glass. The old screw holes served perfectly as guides for new. This stuff cuts like butter with a jigsaw, edges sanded nicely with my orbital sander. I seated it with SIKA sealant after thoroughly cleaning the porthole surfaces. I applied a stripe of SIKA primer to both surfaces before applying the putty. The primer is a nasty looking black paint that dries almost instantly, and costs about $50/pint. MEK cleans it up. I read that it's a must to use this primer if you want to get the best results from the SIKA sealant. I reset the screws immediately to apply pressure.

If anyone else installs lexan, be careful how you decide to clean it. There are microfiber cloths that are useful. Best cleaning solution I found on researching this is a weak solution of AIM toothpaste and lots of water, and a soft cloth. DO NOT USE Windex or other organic solvents on Lexan.

An update for me. I have my draining problems resolved. The hoses were all ok, but the hose had come off the drain fitting in the stern Well, this is not easy to fix! I had to crawl in the cabin along the port side, under the cockpit seating area, to the very back. I removed the porthole cover that is there and reached inside. After contorting my body and stretching my arm until it ached, I found I was able to just touch the stern drain hole fitting. I was able to push the drain hose on the fitting and secure it with a hose clamp. Fortunately I am a relatively small man. If I were any bigger, I could not have done it. As it ism my right arm aches. I hope none of you ever have to do this, but it can be done.

I made sure that I had tied a string around my hex driver and also my arm before reaching in there in case I dropped it. Well, I did drop it, but was able to easily retrieve it.

So, now I am looking forward to a dry cabin. All the cockpit water was running down the recess in the stern and under the cabin into the keel. Now it runs out the stern!!

My keel is still loaded with water that I cannot get to. I guess I have to wait until it evaporates. Maybe now it will.

Next project: build a cabin door.

Paul

Paul
Webmaster: sailmfg.com

Paul, if I ever had to get to those fittings myself, I would have to cut an opening through the inner side of the transom at the bottom of the cockpit, so I could access the fittings from above. I would then install a porthole over the opening to prevent flooding the hull, and to allow access to those fittings as needed.

You might try using a heat gun on the keel to accelerate the drying process. I used one before doing my keel repair, dried it up pretty well.

I also built a new cabin door from 1/8" Luan. I glassed it and painted it with 1-part polyurethane, burgundy color. I still have the clear plastic lower section, so this was just the upper section I had to do.

I have a question. How do you tune the rigging on the Bandit 19?

Those old shroud adjusters are almost impossible to tighten once they are attached to the chainplates. As the tension increases even slightly it becomes impossible to spin the adjuster nut. The way they are designed, I can't get purchase enough to turn them. What am I doing wrong? It can't be that hard to do. BTW, If I tighten them before attaching them to the chainplate, they won't reach.

Help!

I also bought an MFG19 this summer. Only had to spend a couple weekends fixing the electrical, a few other parts, and the brightwork. Then could get it on the water. Put it on a small lake in Maine... It is wonderful.

Working on the boat while on the trailer, I hung a cinder block on the trailer tongue. that was enough to keep it in place.

I had to reach into the back transom... I wish I had thought to tie a string to my nut driver.... of course it was chromium steel and not magnetic... It is now rolling around under the cabin floor... someday it will roll out over the keel.
I was resetting the bolts on my motor mount. One had been stressed and cracked. I used some glass repair and a large washer to distribute the weight.

Vauxia, it sounds like your boat grounded hard on a rock. The keel is molded in one piece with the outer hull and filled with lead. Hopefully you used a low viscosity liquid epoxy that will run into the cracked fibers and seal the damaged hull.

The shroud adjusters are tough. Spray them well with wd-40 or other silicone spray. Then use mechanic's gloves when you turn them. Do not try to make them loosen up so they spin easily... there is a greater risk they would work looser while you are underway. I have been told not to use pliers as you might have a tendency to over tighten them. (I did anyway on a couple that were slightly bent.)

I installed a bilge pump since I was leaving my boat on a mooring. Even with heavy rain it did not run. I will probably remove it but leave the check valve in place so that I can hook it up if I need to. The tubes and wires run up from the bilge cover and get stepped on whenever we go down the companionway.

I have to do something with the headliner... It is falling off in places. I also need to replace the cabin lights.... probably will go with LED if I can. That is next spring's project.