So I spoke too soon when I said on Wednesday ‘who knows where I’m going to find another 100 hours to strip back the forecabin, but at least that’s not holding up any comparable repair work.’ Because yesterday I set about stripping the remaining old linings from heads and forecabin so I could get going on the glue and paint beneath, and was actually quite enjoying that till the unwelcome discovery of rot in the floor and aft wall of the bow well, which are plywood and going to need a similar repair to the main bunk tops.
How this has happened when the plywood’s glassed on the outside and appears to have rotted from the inside, I’m not sure, but I think the half-removed liner’s maybe got wet from a captive wet atmosphere the second time the inside of the boat got very wet and trapped moisture just where you don’t want it but can’t see it. Something I really didn’t expect (I didn’t even know that floor was wood), so another blow just when things were really starting to get sorted. Ultimately just another required repair, but awkward and probably weather dependent, so could change the order things need doing as well as threatening the current satisfying transition from destruction to construction. The good news, I suppose, is there’s literally nowhere else for any more unsuspected horrors to be lurking with every square inch of this boat interior now exposed and inspected. And, in case anyone’s wondering about the exterior fittings in the second photo, the four little blocks with rust stains are where the gas bottle used to sit and the piece of lead (yes, lead!) attached above is the compensatory weight required by Impala one-design rules because I took out the gas in 2003 and fitted a meths cooker instead.
Anyway, that was yesterday’s work and that’s not 100 hours, but today I started on the actual glue and paint. Which hopefully isn’t going to take another 100 hours because I might not go for literally all of the paint this time, though I still want to get the forecabin stripped right back and flow-coated where there’ll be no lining below bunk and lower stringer level. And it might still take a long time because the ‘overhead’ glue (from a fair area of glued-on, under-deck lining where the main cabin has only screw-on panels) is proving more problematic than the ‘topsides’ glue, which seems easier to remove from a different type of paint where drill with nylon brush seems keener to redistribute a tacky mix of overhead glue and paint dust and the glue might be better scraped first. And the irony is I don’t even have to get that under-deck paint off if I can get the glue off it clean…
So why is the sea toilet reclining in the forecabin? Because I unbolted it from its base in the heads compartment to clean and check the integrity of said (wood) base as well as make room to work, but thought it safer to leave the hoses connected for now just in case!
And I think that’s all I meant to say tonight.
Since there definitely appears to be at least a layer of glass cloth on the outside and the area of irretrievably lost wood is relatively small, I’m still wondering whether we might be able to repair this from the inside without cutting the floor right out. I have an idea how it might be done, but see what Twig says when he sees it?
Comment by admin — 6 August 2017 @ 1:38 pm