Glass Repair/Bilge Question?

[petrouchka23]

After my boat co-owner confirmed submerged rock locations, in areas known to have rocks, I decided to do the repair work myself. Boat is up on the hard and I've been grinding away, and have a few questions with what I've found.

1. Grinding down through the keel damage, I eventually hit a hollow space. No material fell out, so I think it must have always been like this. The material you can see through the hole is like a solidified epoxy resin: it looks translucent, it sounds solid, and it feels very hard. Is that just a different type of boat-building material? I'm planning to taper out the work area to achieve a more gradual taper, but feel that I'm in over my head if I start to get into the keel core. Any thoughts on my approach?

2. This square thing in the bilge, say 2 feet aft of the mast, does anyone know what it's for? It looks to be pretty much centered over the keel. Was it part of the building process? For those who don't know, some of the E23s (and mine) had encapsulated keels, and those who posted before maintain there are no keel bolts. If this isn't a keel bolt, then what could it be?

3. How do I update my boat info in my handle (nametag thing)?

 

[Loren Beach]

The area above the ballast piece might be what remains of the lifting eye that was commonly cast into the top of the lead and used to lower it into the hull.
Other material you find as you grind into the 'hull' where the ballast is would be hardened poly resin. There might be some here n there as a sort of filler/spacer in large lumps when they dropped the ballast in. (that's just my SWAG).
Nowadays you can fill any voids you find with thickened resin, and poly or epoxy will do, and some of the newer poly resins can have a longer working time more like the $$ epoxies, and save you some money.
Your bio indicates that you have an E-23-2. You can note that in your sig line, if you wish. That was a fast design with decent cruising amenities, back when young couples thought this was a wonderful move upward to overnighting, from their smaller open dinghies!

Trivia: Also, it was the smallest boat from the factory of a high end yacht builder, so while the accommodations were limited, they benefited from the same carpentry and finish work as used in EY boats up to 46 feet long. Not a cheap boat to buy, back in the day. Rumor was that EY hoped to complete, somewhat, against the J-24 with it's interior decor based on a nice public bathroom (!).
The boat sales version of Gresham's Law was powerful, tho, and EY could not sell the huge numbers compared to their cheaper rivals.

 

[gabriel]

A word of caution:

The Ericson owners manual frequentionly mentions the use of of material they refer to as webestos (or something like that) which I suspect is a mixture of resin and asbestos fibers...

 

[Loren Beach]

Good point. Wear a mask and only grind with a vac to catch the out-fly. (Of course only a lab could now test/confirm this. )

 

[petrouchka23]

Thanks everyone for the replies. It goes a long way to ease some worries I was having, and fills in some cool knowledge about the new-to-us boat!