Update on the strut / shaft hole issue

While investigating the issue with the placement of the strut and shaft hole, I also discovered the water intake is completely in the wrong place.  I tried to get it out with the intention of relocating it, but after about 5 minutes of bashing the hell out of it with a rubber mallet and finding it was just laughing at me, I have for the time being given up on that, and worst case I will just put a blank cap on it.

So after reviewing the maths etc I have come to the conclusion I will have to move the strut and re drill the shaft hole.  The was quite a physiological blow, and I have to confess visions of a chainsaw swam into the recesses of my mind.  Anyway shook all that off and made the first decision, which was do I turn it back over to deal with it, or jack it up on blocks and deal with it with the hull the right way up.  Upside down has appeal because it gives more working space and gravity is on your side, but the cons are building another frame to support it and assembling 20 odd bodies to do the lifting an flipping, and then getting them all back a month later to turn it over again.

So in the end I elected to do it with the hull the right way up so I jacked the boat back up on blocks to give me about 450mm of working room underneath and took a look at the problem.

In the case of the shaft hole I routered a flat about 180mm long by 90mm wide and glued a 4mm piece of ply into it.  The photo below was just after gluing, the piece of timber coning down is just a brace to hold it while the glue sets.

I have already since shaped it with sander and done some filling, its pretty close to fair.  Then I'll strip back the paint a bit further an put a fibre glass patch over the whole lot.  Shouldn't be able tell there was ever a hole there.  I still haven't decided exactly how I am going to fill in the remainder of the shaft hole. I'll probably glue in a piece of solid wood.

For the strut base I did basically the same thing.  Routered a new flat 60mm aft of the current one and glued in a filler block.  To do this routing I mad a jig that fits to the shape of the hull. I also had to make a larger sled for to bolt to my trim router to bridge the gap.  With this I was able to easily router the new flats.  After the filler block was done I tilted the jig by 2 degrees and routed the new angle for the strut base. The photo below is with te new angle in place,  The block at the bottom is filling the 60mm and has been faired back to the hull.

This is my test piece when I was developing the jig, but it illustrates well the sled that I bolted to my trim router

Here is the new strut pad getting close to finished, its a bit hard to see from the photos by the 60mm gap created by shifting the strut back has been filled and faired and then the raised end of the filler block has been faired to the rest of the hull.  I don't have a photo that shows it, but after the fairing was completed I sanded back to bare wood around the pad and then glassed over the whole thing.  In fact todays mission is to final fairing / sanding reading for undercoat.