Repairing a Skeg

Mike Buckley - May 2009

This particular boat has clearly been "repaired" previously - the original slider has been replaced with an electrical connector - - -

The standard slider is secured to the wire with a small grub screw - a 2.5 mm hex key is needed. Sometimes however, a small cross-head screw is used instead - usually because the previous owner has lost the grub screw.

P&H tell me they can no longer supply the original, round slider for the early Capella so an alternative will be used in this repair.

As can be seen, the wire has kinked badly - it was sticking in the conduit, and may have been forced, bending it. Another common cause of the wire being bent is people lifting the wire rather than sliding the control. P&H's early solution was a sticker telling you what to do!

 

For comparison, this picture shows the slightly later system used on a 2002 P&H Quest - and many other boats. The slider itself runs on an integral steel bar which prevents it from being lifted - it's still possible for the wire to be kinked though.

(Valley use a broadly similar system, and there is a known problem with a small number of sliders where the incorrect materials were used and the system rusts badly. This thread on the forum is worth looking at for details of how to deal with the problem, and has links to some pictures of the Valley skeg slider control.)

The slider is secured to the wire with a small grub screw - generally, a 2.5 mm hex key is needed.

 

Stage 1

Loosen the grub screw (or cross-head screw) in the slider just enough that it can run easily on the wire - DO NOT remove the screw entirely as you'll almost certainly lose it and that will ruin your day!

Now turn the boat over so you can get hold of the skeg blade.

Gently start to pull the skeg - if the grub screw on the slider control has been sufficiently loosened the wire will pull through it (if it isn't the sort retained on an integral bar, catch it and put it somewhere safe) and the skeg will lift out of the skeg box.

Continue lifting and you'll be able to slide the skeg blade clear of the pivot pin.

Remove the skeg completely and withdraw the wire from it's housing. This particular one has clearly been troublesome and someone has used oil to try and lube it. The anti-rattle strips have also been damaged.

Oil or grease isn't recommended as it'll only attract grit - it's better to use some form of silicon on the wire - furniture polish is ideal. If all you're doing is cleaning the wire, then use a hose to flush the conduit, clean the wire, apply some furniture polish and re-assemble.

P&H bond the wire to the skeg blade - (Valley, and some others, use a grub screw). To remove a bonded wire, secure it to something and pull the skeg. If you're lucky, it'll just pull out. If it doesn't, then various methods have been suggested - one is to heat the wire with a blowtorch and that will cause the bonding to melt, freeing the wire. Another suggestion involves placing the entire skeg blade in boiling water to heat it, remove, and then pull it off the wire.

I drilled either side of the wire to destroy the bond, secured the wire in a vice and pulled it out - only moderate force was needed but this could have been just because I was repairing a previous repair and not dealing with the original bond. I then cleared the cross drilling with a larger drill bit and a coarse file and finished with a finer one and chamfered the edges a little with a counter-sink tool just to tidy it up.

I also replaced the damaged anti-rattle strips using the "fuzzy" side of self-adhesive velcro and drilled a hole to attach a length of paracord.

This makes it much easier for a buddy to pull the skeg down when the boat is afloat if the skeg has jammed with gravel or sand, and is much easier than fiddling around trying to grip it with pliers and you'll certainly not get a grip on it just using your fingers.

Trying to force the skeg down with the slider is a common cause of the wire becoming kinked. If the skeg has jammed, pull it down instead of forcing it with the slider - wire doesn't like being subjected to compression forces.

If you leave the wire skeg down when you run up on land or over an object, the wire can kink. So learn not to do that! If it's a club boat, this is an essential learning point for your members.

Mix some epoxy resin - I used Alaldite.

One side of the hole has been blanked off with electrical tape to retain the epoxy and create a nice smooth finish.

(At this point, you could consider Toby Speight's cunning modification to make the wire "field replaceable" in the future.)

I also cleaned the wire off with acetone (nail varnish remover will do - or any similar solvent) to remove any oil or grease, and smeared some epoxy on the wire end before gently inserting it into the hole and on into the body of the skeg. One strand unraveled a bit which will probably be a good thing as it gives something for the epoxy to grip.

On reflection, perhaps splaying the wire a little once it's been inserted would be a good idea, again just to provide more grip.

I then filled the hole with epoxy, working it well around the wire with a toothpick - another piece of tape went on top and I ran a straight edge over it just to squeeze the resin into the wire as much as possible, but also to give a nice smooth finish on both sides.

I also dressed the other end of the wire with a smear of epoxy to stop it unraveling when being fed into the conduit

Leave it to set overnight.

The end result 24 hours later! Quite pleased with it overall.

If you dressed the control end of the wire with epoxy, now's the time to check if it needs a rub down with sandpaper to make sure the diameter is the same as the rest of the wire or it won't feed into the conduit and the slider control.

Furniture polish applied over the length of the wire.

Any silicon type lube will do - but don't use oil or grease.

As the original round sliders are no longer available, P&H suggested the later "T" shaped slider with the end cut off at the point where the supporting bar would normally go. A hacksaw and sandpaper created a reasonable fit for the slider in it's recess on the boat.

P&H supply the slider with the correct hex key - which is nice.

The hole was slightly too small for the wire, so I opened it up a little using the 3.5 mm drill.

Re-assembly really is as simple as just reversing the removal process shown earlier - take care to prevent the wire from unraveling as you feed it into the conduit at the skeg box if you've not dressed it with epoxy when you were working on it earlier.

Once the wire emerges from the conduit in the slider recess, feed it through the slider and on into the conduit at the other side. Adjust the slider so that the skeg is able to drop enough and then tighten the grub screw.

This particular repair has worked very well, although as the second picture shows, the wire tends to sit a little high when the slider is run back to drop the skeg so a little care will need to be taken not to lift it! Then again, that's what the sticker says! The Denwire seems to be less flexible than the original, so may be less inclined to kink anyway.

As a final tip, it's worth checking the wire conduit in the boat to make sure it's well secured along it's length - if it can flex away from the hull that can be a cause of a "sticky" skeg.

 

Tom Fuller notes that some later Capellas (this one is a 2004, 3 hatch version) use a different slider arrangement where the wire runs thro a guide tube, the slider knob being secured thro a hole in the tube. The wire is moulded into the skeg. The slider uses a crosshead screw. Click here for a .pdf with his description and pictures.

There is also a known problem with getting the wire to pass through into the guide tube, and John Norris documents the solution - click here for a .pdf of his description and pictures (also linked from Tom's article).