More boat repairs and trailer modifications

 After our first sail on June 4th it was apparent that we needed to look into the leak issues and figure a way to launch without submerging our tow vehicle. we took on quite a bit of water in the few hours we on the water and I was not going to be constantly worried about sinking. I started in on the leaks first while I thought about a way to fix the trailer issues.
 The first area to repair was the most obvious and that was the crack in the stern. What I thought was the crack turned out to be a surface defect

from someone's previous attempt to fix the real issue and that was the stern wall being cracked on both sides of the rudder hinge pin bracket. It is hard to see in the pic but the long horizontal line is not really a penetrating crack but the two vertical lines next to the hinge pin bracket bolts holes were cracked all the way through. With the bracket on the stern those cracks were hidden. As I ground off the paint I could tell where someone had tried to fix this area before but due to a really poor repair and an even worse attempt to re enforce the area from the inside it did not work.

As you can see it had been leaking fro quite some time and there was only one wood block behind the port side bolt for the bracket. I was able to get all that rotted wood out of the area and cleaned it the best I could. Luckily I have long arms and work well when I can't see what I am  doing.

 I ground the area down as far as I felt comfortable and faired it out then rebuilt the area with multiple layers of glass and West Systems epoxy. I added 4 new layers of glass so the area is good and strong now. Once I had finished the glass work I added a new wood re enforcement to the inside while a skim coat of fillet dried on the outside.

 The new re enforcement covers both hinge bracket holes and just to spread the load out a lil better I made a aluminum plate to cover both holes in the wood. That will help prevent the bolts from counter sinking themselves down into the wood as time goes by. It was not long before the repair was ready for primer

 

Then paint

While I waited on epoxy on the stern to dry I also worked on the leak in the keel trunk area. It just had to leak in the same compartment that all the electrical connections are in, you know it would. The leak was actually coming in around a wood re enforcement that is buried in the glass.

I really wish I would have had time to pull the boat out and drop the keel and fix it correctly from the outside but that will have to wait till sailing season is over. For now the best I could do is grind all the glass down and prep it for epoxy and several layers of glass. It was no fun working down in the battery compartment but I have done worse. Luckily the mirror I put up in the cabin with double face foam tape decided to fall off so I used it to be able to see the back side of the area that leaked. Without it I could not see what I was doing there. After several coats of epoxy and layers of glass it was ready to try out

While I was at it I took the nuts off the port side keel bolts and cleaned out around the bolt threads. Just to make sure they were water tight I drizzled thinned epoxy around the base of the bolts sealing them into the hull. There was so much water coming in the first leak that it was hard to tell if they were leaking but better safe than sorry.
 Once the leaks were taken care of it was time to start on the trailer. The issue was that with the small SUV's of today the distance between the center of the rear wheel and the trailer hitch is very short. For our boat to get deep enough to flat we had to totally submerge the 4 Runner's rear bumper  in water. I feared that it would be even worse when used our Jeep to launch the boat so something had to be done.

Our trailer was originally a tilt trailer with a short tongue. Myself, nor the previous owner, never had the balls to pull the release lever and tilt the trailer. After watching some youtube vids of tilt trailers being used I did not see any way of getting our boat reloaded if we titled it. What we needed was a longer tongue. So my solution was to convert the trailer from a tilt trailer to a extending tongue trailer. There were several different ideas on how to do it online so after looking at all of them I came up with my on plan. My plan was to build two "sleeves" out of 1/4" plate steel for the new tongue to slide in. Then I would weld two plates to the under side of the factory frame to bolt the sleeves to. Due to the winch stand bolting to the factory trailer beam with u bolts I had to give the new tongue and air gap  so it would clear the u bolts.
 First step was to drill a lot of holes in the plates I would make the sleeves out of

Once the holes were drilled it was time to clamp parts together and start welding

 I am not a welder but I enjoy trying to be one from time to time. I find it challenging and when it works and I don't set myself on fire very rewarding to melt steel with electricity. I don't have a large welder so it took quite a while to weld 8 feet of seams on the sleeves.
 Next step was to cut off the tilting tongue parts

 With that cut off and the sleeves welded together it was time to do a trial run and make sure it would actually work. Here is the new tongue in the tow position which is a foot longer than factory

 and here it is in the launch position

 With the new tongue extended and locked it gives us right at 5 feet more. I really wanted 8 feet but due to the way the trailer was designed I was unable to get the extra 3 feet. Had it not been for the board that the keel sits on I could have got the extra 3 feet but I was not comfortable with the idea of cutting the board back to the next cross member as it would have probably developed a bad bow in it from the keel's weight had I done that.
 After several late nights of welding 45 seconds and letting my welder cool 10 mins I finally finished the trail mod. Here it is all painted and wired in the tow position

and here it is in the launch position

As you can see the paint on the sliding tongue part lasted all of one slide ;-( I should have known better but it is the thought that counts. Over all it works really slick. When we arrive at the launch ramp I hop out and chock the trailer tires, pull the pins, pull forward till the sliding tongue hits the stop bolt, then re insert the pins in the launch position holes. There is a half inch pin in the center of each sleeve that indexes the tongue in the tow or launch position. I made sure to put weight on the tongue when I drilled the holes as it would have weight on it when it was hooked to the tow vehicle. There is just enough vertical play in the sleeves to have caused an issue had I not done that. After we retrieve the boat we just reverse the process and slide the tongue back and re pin it before we head back to park the boat.  I finished it just in time to load everything up and head back to the lake for sail number 2!!!