My Romany is looking pretty due for a keel strip. I’m sure after the nest couple of days at Downeast it will really desire one.
Can anyone recommend someone within 100 miles of Albany NY who installs traditional keel strips?
nah…take a trip to westport mass
osprey sea kayaks does a great job…
Thank you.
Westport is doable. I’ve have to decide when I want to be without my Romany for a bit 
Are you handy?
Putting on a keel strip (I put one on my Explorer) isn’t rocket science and if you are comfortable working with your hands and epoxy there are numerous postings on how to do it and the Sea Kayaker article from a year or so back also does an excellent job walking you through the process. I just went with regular fiberglass tape on mine and simply mixed the color tint material straight into the epoxy thus skipping the gel coat step. It’s been on for three years, no problems and most think it was a commercial job.
If you prefer to have it done by somebody else, and don’t want to deal with getting your boat over to some ocean based shop, I think if you brought the Sea Kayaker article or a downloaded article to a quality marina in your area that does fiberglass work and state to them that you would like it done as portrayed in the article, you would be able to get it done locally. At heart it is just basic fiberglass work.
jim,
you can do this.
send me an email if you want.
hope you had a great time…nice to see someone got some weather!
agree with trmoraine
It’s actually really a do it yourself project. I don’t cook for myself (unless I’m camping) and won’t sew on my own buttons, but I managed to put on an almost perfect keel strip, with some coaching. All you need is a cell phone. The almost perfect part didn’t have any effect on the utility of the keel strip it just looked messy and probably slowed me down .0005K/hr.
Lyn
same
I also put one on my Explorer using that article, and really hadn’t done much of anything with fiberglass before. Came out just fine. I did it over two days - first to mask and sand, the second to do all of the glass work.
It doesn’t look quite as nice as a factory installed Valley keel strip, but it does the job. I could put another coat on it and it would probably do the trick.
rick
– Last Updated: Sep-12-08 11:32 AM EST –
Thanks, however, if I decide to do it myself it won't get done. I prefer to spend my somewhat limited time messing with boats IN boats or in the water near them ;-) I've got three other sea kayaks I can use while the keel strip is being done.
We had some conditions this year for Downeast. Last year the 4* assessment had to be canceled for lack of conditions. Last year we had conditions for the first day of 4* training but it died the second day and was non-exisitent the day assessment was scheduled... so most went to Sullivans Falls.
Julio told me he still found RWS a blast even with the lack of conditions. One of these years I'd like to make both RWS and Downeast.