Bilge keels next. These were a bit of a pig to install but they are now fitted.
I used an odd, slightly fibrous plastic for these. About 3mm thick, it has a bit of flex to it, which I hope will prove resilient over time.
One keel was offered up and the hull marked. I abraded the smile into the hull, as I need as good a bonding surface as possible for a plastic keel on a fibreglass hull, the two materials are not friends! The keel was pinned with 1.5mm brass rod in three places, holes drilled into the hull accordingly, and the whole thing jammed into place. It was a bit of a fight as the pins are not parallel with each other, rather at 90 degrees to the inner face of the keel. So, when offered up the holes did not quite match the heads of the brass pins. God job the plastic had a bit of give to it!With one keel in place, I then measured down from the deck to the pin holes for the other keel.
Final job, bonding them in place. Luckily the mating surface was not 100% perfect, if it had been It would have been a messier job. I taped underneath the keels and fed in a mix of epoxy and bulking agent, with the rounded end of a lolly stick. This was then warmed up with a hot air gun. This encourages the epoxy to become a bit more liquid, and wick into the joint. Once this had tacked off, I turned the boat upside down to repeat the process from underneath.