Centerboard leading edge repair

[dwdenise]

I've recently acquired a DS1 project boat. One of the projects is the centerboard. The trailer's only current centerboard support is a single roller in the upper half of the board. That roller has dented and cracked open the board's leading edge. See attached photos.

On the trailer, I plan to add a pivoting bunk running most of the length of the centerboard.

On the centerboard, I plan to wrap the crack with 3 or 4 layers of bias cut fiberglass cloth. My local lake has lots of submerged trees, so even without the crack, I want to reinforce the WHOLE leading edge to protect from collisions.

I'm debating filling the crack with epoxy before applying the fiberglass. It seems to me the interior fill is just that, fill, with the board's strength coming from the fiberglass shell. I think filling that gap wouldn't make it any stronger.

Opinions on filling the crack?
Opinions on how many layers of glass to add?

[GreenLake]

Epoxy makes great glue. Something like SystemThree's GelMagic in the cartridge with the self-mixing tip would be very convenient for gluing the two halves together. Not only do you mix only what you need, and when you need it, but the tip is a great applicator when you are dealing with a crack like your pictures show.

The next step I would recommend is to use 3M (Marine) High Strength Repair Filler. It's a great way to not only fill the notch (dent), but also to further bulk up the leading edge, so the cross section of the edge better resembles a C than a sideways V.

The profile cross section of the stock CB is pretty poor. You won't be able to turn it into a perfect hydrodynamic profile, but gently rounding the leading edge should help. On mine, I also extended the trailing edge by about 1/2". That may not necessarily even void your warranty, as in, violate class rules, because stock CB are sometimes not as wide as maximally allowed. Mine wasn't.

The repair filler is non-sagging and you can rough shape it using a spreader, and then sand it down. For the trailing edge I used wax paper as a means to shape the piece added to the edge.

After creating a rounded edge, you can certainly give it a sheath of glass. I don't think you need to go to extremes. The key to avoiding hard damage to your CB is to make sure your CB can swing up when you hit something with it. The repair filler I mentioned is pretty tough (it's glass reinforced), and I don't recall needing to add a layer of to my CB, but I did add some glass to the leading edge of my rudder (built from scratch from plywood) and I've used 14 oz regular cloth.

Feel free to look up my old posts on both CB and rudder repair/rebuild for details that I may have forgotten. All of these repairs have held up for multiple seasons.

PS: my CB also rests on a single roller and that seems to be mostly OK - however, I don't have to go very far with it, so it mostly sits.