When Terry Abel repaired the keel of his 40-year-old swing keel yacht, he was surprised by what he found

Photo: Enya was carried out to inspect the swing keel

Sailing is full of compromises, and ships with swinging keels are one of them. They will never be as fast or agile as their flipper keel cousins, but what a comforting thing to be able to reduce draught by a few feet when you are short of water! Here, on the coast of Essex, in the sandbars at the mouth of the Thames, the feeling is not a compromise, but a godsend.

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If you have bought or owned a sailboat of a "certain vintage" in the past 20 years, you will almost certainly spend hours searching the Internet for articles about your latest craft. This is what I did when I purchased the swing keel Pandora 700 in 2016. She was built by Rydgeway Marine around 1980, and the history is somewhat tortuous.

In order to learn as much as possible about the class, history, performance and structure, I searched the Internet for Pandora. I found some ads for selling yachts and many jewelry, but until I came across pandorasailing.com, a wonderful website operated by the South Carolina Yacht Club in Abbotsock, North Wales. They compete with an excellent Pandora fleet (fin keel boats), and they don’t know much about sailing, rigging and repairing ships.

However, to my surprise, I saw a picture of a very neat Pandora 700 called RedStart. Her sail number is the same as mine: 799. Is it a mistake? On the map, Abbotsock is located opposite Malden, Essex, England. The distance between the two ships on the British mainland is almost the same, because I don't participate in the race, so I really didn't find the problem. But I am curious!

Terry found another Pandora with the same sail number, named RedStart, sailed here by Ian Curnow and his daughter Emily. Photo: Green Sea Photography

I made some inquiries and got in touch with Ian Curnow, the owner of RedStart. It turned out that the original (blue shell) fin keel was built in 1980, but it sank at her mooring. Her first owner sent the ship back to Rydgeway Marine in Kessingland, Norfolk, and a new finned keel, red hull Pandora 700 (hull number 823) was shipped to Abbotsoke as a replacement Taste. During the conversion process, the owner kept the original sails, and when his beautiful, shiny, new red hull arrived, he naturally did what a Welsh sailor of any ancestry would do: he bends the sail to sail. After the four owners, the RedStart still races under the hull of the 823 and the sail of the 799.

"When I first bought RedStart, I was worried," Ian admitted, "So, I explored what happened; it's like buying a car with a Duff file! But in my opinion, 799 is more Good number."

But what happened to the original hull? I suspect (but don't know) that the reason she sank at the mooring was a leak around the fin-shaped keel bolts. I recommend this because I once owned a brand new "dual fin" (bilge keel) Hunter Horizon 21. Freya, Hull No. 3, was an exhibit at the Southampton Boat Show in 1991. In the weeks after the show, after a lively voyage from the Essex coast to Harwich with a good No. 5 east wind in October, a leak occurred around the port bilge keel bolts (really crying) ). Towed away and sitting on her trailer, she was sent back to the Hunter factory in Rochford, Essex, where she arranged for the keel to be stripped and re-layed. Within a week, the problem was solved. Back in the water, Freya and I spent good years together.

However, whatever the problem with Pandora 799, Rydgeway Marine decided that it would be better to solve it by changing the keel configuration from a fin-like structure to a swing keel.

In any case, 36 years later, Aphrodite-just like when I bought her-languished in a corner of a courtyard in Malden. From the perspective of her sculls and fine-tuning, she has already participated in the competition a bit, but now she has a good set of cruising sails and roller reefing headsail. When her owner lost control while lowering the mast, her mast was broken. Although the insurance company has paid for a new mast and a set of vertical rigging, I think her owner just walked in frustration. opened. When I first saw her, she was already standing and ignored for several years.

The yard manager Adrian told me that the new mast and vertical rigging were on the mast frame and were still in the shipping package. The deal looked good, so I bought her at a very low price and set out to sort her out.

The first thing to go is that name! Can you imagine the phonetic spelling of Aphrodite in an emergency? I changed her name to Enya, which is a Celtic name, which means "spark of life". Echo November Yankees Alpha-much better!

I stripped her naked, replaced the tired old interior, reinstalled her, repaired and reinstalled the roller reefing mast (the mast was broken when it was lowered), replaced the running rigging and rewired her.

During the anti-fouling process, I noticed that the bronze/DZR skin installed on the centerline, just at the tail of the short keel, was worn out. The accessory guides the suspending rope on the swing keel through the hull and is connected to the cockpit splint through a hose. The movement of the rope, with the help of some nice East Coast mud as a cutting compound, wears a groove on the accessory. I made a psychological record and replaced it next season.

In the spring and summer of 2017, I drove her up and down the Essex/Suffolk coast, and made minor adjustments and improvements to the rig, such as the lazy jack and the cockpit’s operating control line to suit my (mostly ) One-handed sailing.

Enya nestled in a mooring on the Blackwater River in Malden

Then, in early May 2018, I started a short "adjustment" voyage. Running with an old, bullet-proof 5 horsepower Johnson on a 2-stroke, I slid down my mooring, lifted the main, unfolded Genoa, and killed the outboard. Halfway through the Malden fairway, I noticed that she seemed to be handling it "strangely". Kind of "edge" tracking horizontally instead of straight. I forgot to lower the swing keel, but this shouldn't make such a big difference. I took it apart anyway. The lifting rope roared out of my hand, leaving a nasty rope on my left palm, which reminded me why we never wind the load rope around our hands! The rope is stopped at the bottom of the cockpit by an appropriately named stop knot! Staring stupidly at the tight knot, I realized, terribly clear, something was wrong... The 90-pound cast iron swinging keel fell off! The tow rope, only 10 mm long, kept the huge iron block in contact with the ship.

The tide is still flooding, and there is still half an hour before the swaying keel is dragging in the mud at the bottom of the boat! I couldn't lift it, and didn't want to cause more damage when it swayed under the boat, so I activated the outboard, rolled off Genoa and lowered the main. Then with the last flood and most of Johnson's horsepower, we limped and returned to the yard slowly and painfully by the river.

When the rocking keel alternately dragged through the mud and hit the gravel at the bottom, we staggered. Finally, back in the yard, I tied to the long pontoon bridge and waited for the low tide. About an hour later, as the swinging keel was cushioned in the mud, the lifting rope had a little slack. I let Enya relax forward to prevent her from sitting on her separate casting.

The tide finally left us, and we could see the swinging keel three feet behind the beam, half submerged in the mud. When I unfastened it, I thanked the stop knot, then used the boat hook to remove the line and tie it to the mooring cleat on the pontoon. Among us, Adrian and I lifted the huge metal block covered in mud from the pontoon.

I washed away the dirt, hoping to find a hole where the pivot bolt should be-before it corrodes and causes my current predicament. But there is no hole! There are no broken pivot bolt fragments; no. Just a carefully cast wing-shaped cast iron block with cast trunnions on each side (trunnions are common "protrusions" on old navy and military barrels, allowing the barrel to rotate around them on the gun frame to change the height of the gun ).

Adrian offered to hoist the ship the next morning so that I could investigate this strange arrangement. That night, another web search found nothing!

On the Pandora 700 swing keel variant, a huge short keel with a central groove is fixed to the hull with keel bolts in the usual way. The swing keel castings are loaded into the grooves. The trunnion slides into the port and starboard "chimney" slots, which are cast into the inside of the short keel slots. Once in place, the swinging keel is secured by two trunnion plates that close the chimney slot below the short keel. Over time, the trunnion has worn and corroded the way through the fixed plate. Adrian and I managed to clean and unscrew the three stainless steel M8 fixing screws that fastened each plate to the short keel, and then removed them for inspection. They are not a pretty sight!

The next day, using the old board as a guide, I made two new boards with 10x40x125mm low-carbon steel rods, and set about repositioning the swing keel.

Please pay attention to how the trunnion plate is worn and corroded to the extent that it allows the trunnion to fall off. Interestingly, the cast iron trunnion itself has almost no wear

I should add that this is only a description of what I did, not a suggestion on how to do it. The swing keel is very heavy, and if it slips or falls, it may cause serious injury. Anyone trying to replicate this should do so at their own risk.

I used wooden blocks and car jacks to lift the alternate ends of the swing keel castings until the final swing keel was positioned in the groove of the short keel, and the two trunnions were located in their respective port and starboard grooves. Two new trunnion plates were laid on the linoleum putty, and six stainless steel countersunk screws were screwed into the bottom plate grooves, and blind tapping was performed on the underside of the short keel.

Left: A new port side trunnion plate has been installed. 'gunk' is linseed oil putty. Upper right and lower right: skinning accessories on the keel. Pay attention to the grooves worn into the previous round holes

Before reinstallation, the stainless steel M8 machine screws are coated with water pump grease, and I run the M8 faucet into the threaded short keel hole to clean the threads.

When free, the swing keel trunnion presses on the port and starboard trunnion plates, so that the swing keel pivots when pulling or releasing the upper sling.

When I was there, I thought I would check that bronze/DZR upgrade skin accessory. It was soon discovered that this was a very timely move, because when I tried to unscrew the internally threaded collar, it had disintegrated! DZR or brass? Either way, it is dezincified and becomes brittle. I used a pipe wrench to unscrew the main body of the accessory from the outside and saw that the upper drawstring had passed through the accessory. There is a pinhole through which I can see the sunlight, only a little bit of old sealant keeps the North Sea away from my boat! The nautical god must have been smiling at me—if not really.

I cleaned the holes inside and outside the hull, then installed a new, high-quality skin fitting covered with a good marine sealant, and replaced the hose connecting the hull fitting to the cockpit outlet. Shuangxi editing completed the work. It's not challenging or difficult, but I think this maintenance saved my ship.

So you have it; it is worth mentioning that I have gained the wisdom of how to make the Pandora swing keel float on the waves in the right way; although I am sure that many of them are applicable to any swing keel design. Now, my annual haul/maintenance list includes two new necessities:

• Remove at least one trunnion plate for inspection. If it wears out, check another one and replace it as needed (I estimate that every three years in my area, Enya sits on a semi-tidal mud berth).

• Inspect the lifting hull skin fittings (and ropes) annually and replace them when they first show signs of wear.

In 2019 and 2020, Enya and I sailed many miles on the coasts of Essex and Suffolk, crossing the Thames estuary to Ramsgate, where only changes in weather prevented the crossing to Blow before COVID nirvana. We have passed through the marshes and around Sheppey Island, and through the Buxie Sands through the Leysha Strait, exploring the Crouch River. If I do my best to keep her well maintained and sail carefully, this capable boat will take me anywhere.

This feature appeared in the Practical Shipowner’s Magazine. For more articles of this type, including DIY, money-saving advice, great boat projects, expert tips and ways to improve boat performance, please subscribe to the best-selling boating magazine in the UK.

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