Zinc spacing on steel hulls

Hi Rolf

You have substantial changes from the BR original design. The winged keel, skeg, strut placement, house, aft deck, pilothouse, and rudder are all mods, but that's pretty common with these boats to customize things.

From your pic it looks like your skeg has not been reinforced. Some boats are modified with internal reinforcement only, so if you post a pic from in front of the rudder shaft penetration I can tell you whats up.

No idea why your prop and shaft did not corrode, quite surprising really. Standard practice is to zinc that carefully. I do not see much space for a shaft zinc, so you could do a nut zinc behind the prop.

My concern with the bow zincs was snagging fishing line, nets etc. With the right zinc grind and fit it should not happen too often.

 

Here are some pictures from inside the boat. First one shows the rudder post and area just in fron of it. Second picture shows the seection in front of that, with two steel bars on each side, in addition to the general frame structure.. The distance between them is 20 cm. So obviously a reinforcement, but is that sufficient?

 

Sufficient depends on a lot of factors. If you tell us the intended use of the vessel that would help to offer an opinion about your build.

The reason many people chose a steel Offshore 44 is that it is well designed for extended remote voyages and survive very heavy weather. The hull can withstand much more punishment from heavy seas, collisions and groundings than the vast majority of "offshore" designed cruising vessels. With this in mind, the skeg needs to be carefully looked at. For less demanding cruising, you will be fine as built.

 

The plan is to make the boat operational asap and from there develop it into a home that can go almost anywhere and be be selfsufficient for long periods. So skeg reinforcement is surely something I am considering. I was thinking that maybe connecting the skeg with the keel, probably with a keelcooler, could be an option. That would move the lateral plane aft, but maybe it is not too bad, as I would reduce weather helm.
(I guess this is not the right thread to discuss various details of my boat I am working on a presentation post of my project.)

 

Hi Rolf, Yes I think you might additional replies and feedback on your design project in a dedicated thread. I am glad to offer my experience with projects on the Roberts 44, but nice to hear from others.