I am really glad I removed the bottom of the keel trough and installed rollers so I can see the keel bottom. Today I decided to inspect the keel bottom after the shakedown cruise a couple days ago. The boat has been on the water only twice. Just behind the centerboard I discovered some small cracks:
As you can see the cracks mostly follow the weave. Here is a closer look at one of the cracks:
I am pretty sure this is an area where I added some dynel cloth. I checked my blog and sad to say I did not document it, but the weave looks coarser than fiberglass and just aft of the trunk I can feel a slight rise which definitely seems to be where I added the dynel cloth. Aft of the cracks, it appears I did a much better job of smoothing out the transition, but I can still see the weave until at one point it becomes very smooth. This makes me almost positive I put dynel cloth there to help with abrasion resistance. If I am right about this then I'm not worried about water infiltration because there is fiberglass cloth and three layers of epoxy under the dynel. So all I need to do is some sanding and filling the cracks with slightly thickened epoxy--just need to get it done while the weather stays above 50 at night.
Any of you experts out there please let me know if you agree this looks like dynel cloth under the epoxy and paint. If you don't think so what is your advice? I would think a length of fiberglass tape and epoxy would be best.