San Juan 21 Class Association

Your repair list seems logical & well-thought-out.:) While you have the keel out, you might have a good ogle at the plywood cheek plates surrounding the pivot bolt. Especially test the bottom couple inches for moisture -- leaks around the keel gasket screws often let water into the edges of the plyw...

Diarmuid is right in the long term. Short term, I would chip out as much wood as possible using increasingly longer nails. Then duct tape the holes from below and fill with epoxy, leaving it for a few minutes to absorb into adjoining wood. Then suck out excess epoxy using syringe and add colloidal ...

Personally, I'd say fix it once and for good. If you start cutting out core from below, you'll soon learn the extent of wet balsa. Begin small & work outward, esp. aft, until you find dry wood. Then you can shape pieces of solid core material (I like phenolic) to the cavity, glue them against the ou...

Welcome to the forum & the boat, Badger. It's one of the all-time great lake-sailing boats -- easy to set up and launch, reasonably quick in light air, big cockpit to stretch out in. If your inland lake is prone to summer squalls, I'd advise a two-line jiffy reefing setup and a couple reef points ju...

Yes -- photos, pls, if anyone had a chance to get some. We sail at 7300', at the foot of some 12,000' mountains. What the Nat'l site describes is a fairly typical wind pattern for a mountain lake. https://sites.google.com/a/wildblue.net/hedgehogia/_/rsrc/1276119471244/Home/wind2.JPG Thirty-plus is a...

Here's an SJ21 web site from Tim Thorpe Allen, a really nice fellow who lives up your way (Boothbay, ME): http://sailing.thorpeallen.net/Quasar/ It includes info on recoring with balsa. Like him, I was *this* close to sawing off the whole coachroof & bringing it into the the shop; glad I didn't, tho...

Welcome, Bill. Recoring the deck is an inevitable SJ21 project; it's not bad at all, once you get in the swing of it. Have you determined how much core you will need to replace, and where the soggy bits are? That's always the first step. We recored from a foot before the mast step to the bulkhead on...

It can be amazingly tough to figure out where water is coming from. Here's the classic test: Dry everything from the mast step to the back of the keel box as thoroughly as possible with sponges and a terrycloth towel. Really squeaky dry. Might even want to do a wipe down with an alcohol-soaked rag, ...

One caveat about opening the molded liner areas. They may have been sealed for a reason! Does anyone know if a SJ21 has positive flotation with the cabin swamped? Just giving the volume of the liner a crude hairy eyeball, I'd bet it's pretty darn close to enuf air to keep the gunwhales at sea level ...

Another trick if you just want enuf juice for a handheld GPS and running lights in the evening: Bring a jump-starter pack. http://www.realtruck.com/images/products/roadpro-portable-jump-starter-emergency-station/thumbs-480x360/rpat-777.jpg First year on our boat, that's all we used for our electrica...