[Public-List] Beneath the sole...

[Rachel]

On Aug 8, 2008, at 7:19 PM, Derrick Serrer wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> I have a question about what exactly lies under the cabin sole?
> On my boat (#127) I have 4 hatches that get progressively smaller in 
> depth as one moves forward. The one closest to my engine is where my 
> battery currently lies. My question is what lies below the bottom of 
> the compartments. I realize that as one moves forward, the iron keel 
> would begin to rise up but is there not a large empty space down there 
> below the first two compartments?

Well I can answer that one!

I would imagine that your boat is very similar to my #221 (the earlier 
boats than mine that I have seen have been virtually the same in that 
area).

The forward two of the compartments go right down to the top of the 
ballast pig.

The after two have plywood bottoms, and below that is a wedge shaped 
space (gets larger aft) between the flat plywood "sub sole" of those 
compartments and the top of the ballast pig.  On my boat you could see 
in there through a little factory "mouse hole" (i.e. dome-topped 
cutout) in the plywood bulkhead that separates the engine space from 
the forward sub bilge areas.

The forward end of the plywood "sole" in the 3rd compartment is just at 
the ballast pig.  The after end of compartment #4 is about 6" above the 
ballast pig.  So there's not really that much room there.  The fact 
that the ballast pig is iron and not lead means it's larger than it 
would be if it were lead, since iron is less dense.
>
> Also, how hard is it to reach the iron in the keel? I would like to 
> drill into it in order to attach a ground for an HF radio?

It's pretty easy.  There was only a small amount of barely reinforced 
resin used to seal off the top of the ballast pig, so it's probably 
going to be very accessible on your boat.  I went in and sealed mine 
off with multiple layers of biaxmat and epoxy (that was fun....), 
because the iron was in good, dry, non-rusty condition and I wanted it 
to stay that way.

Let me know if I can clarify further.

Rachel
#221


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