There is a rather large opening in the
hull around the exit of the
saildrive on my 44'
trimaran. It is a bit of a performance
boat, and something like this on the bottom of the
hull seems like a big screwup. I know that the
engine must have some wriggle room, but I really don't want the critters that live in the hole or the turbulence which must result from the big rectangular gap in the hull form.
The after edge fits about as well as the fwd. in the pic. How can I get rid of this gap without adversely affecting the drive unit?
I could fill it with expanding foam and razor cut it and glass over and
paint it. Perhaps a
single layer of 6 oz glass would still be flexible enough to allow enough movement to keep it happy.
I suppose I could get some very slippery sheet (HDWE or such) plastic and cut it to fit over the leg and screw it to the hull at the edge.
Either of these would slow the ingress of sea
water when the rubber boot fails around the drive leg.
Any other Ideas?
Don't bother telling me to junk the
saildrive. I would love to, but it works well and would be a big bump in the
project chart at this time, in cost as well as effort. When it takes a dump( I hear they all die young ), that may be an option as I would love to move the
engine away from the transom, but not now.