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Fuel line issues.
Explaination to come.For the full story on the keel...
First coat of primer. The skeg is being primed as well. It feels like we're finally making progress.
Another view, dry fitting the cleaned skeg. 'Fit' is the key word, and it does, perfectly. Now we're ready to start priming and putting things back together.
The shaft is in, and the rudder back on, (which involved lifting the boat so the keel was a good four feet up from the ground, then delicately lowering her back down over her rudder shaft. Now we check the skeg for fit and alignment.
First order of business to reassemble everything. The shaft goes back in before the oversized rudder goes on. Among last year's many issues were tired shaft and rudder stuffing boxes. New packing, flax for the rudder, GFO (pictured) for the shaft have been cut on proper angles. I cut extra pieces; if I need them they'll be ready and waiting.
And finally, everything set, but it's raining. We figure we can still work, so long as things stay dry underneath. But then the rain kicked into high gear and the island of dry beneath the boat flooded and we had to throw in the towel. Of course, no sooner than we clean up the rain slacked, but everything was too soaked to work.
Weapons of re-construction. But everything is hurry up and wait for things to cure, and now it's too late in the day to start the fiberglass.
The core epoxied into place, the bolt holes
re-drilled oversized. These holes were then filled with reinforced epoxy. After
everything is reglassed, they'll be redrilled to actual size, and there should
be no way water can find a way in.
The new core. Three pieces of teak, laminated with West and layers of fiberglass reinforcement.
Harsh, but effective.
Weapons of destruction.
The plan; re-core the keel with solid teak, reinforcing the bolt holes, and reglass the whole area from the bottom up, wrapping it completely rather than just the strip of glass, which clearly failed. Step one. Remove some very thick fiberglass along the outside of the keel. More strange looks.
Frank got some strange looks as he used a sledge hammer and chisel to excavate the core of the now open keel, but eventually he reached clean, unsaturated ballast.
The remains of the original repair to the keel.
Cleaned up inside.
The keel. Years ago a skeg was added. In the process a section of the keel was cut and reglassed, then drilled for the bolts securing the skeg. Unfortunately those bolts eventually allowed water to leak in, then weep out when the boat was hauled. This year we pulled the skeg to take a closer look. We found a gap in the repair which easily separated, revealing waterlogged cement ballast.
So the bridge is all cleaned up. Time to dry things out, above and below.
Interesting thing is how the teak plank coring can be seen from below. 4" wide, 1/2" thick teak planks. Fortunate thing this boat was cored throughout with solid teak, something otherwise unheard of, but 32 years later, all this coring, though damp in places, is solid.
This is part of the 'things look worse before they can look better phase.' The headliner is down so we can properly address the leaks from both ends. More yet to come apart, and more pictures (and explanation) to follow.
All the planks are up. And it looks like they're going to stay that way a while, as we tackle some repairs we can see from beneath, now that the headliner's down in the cabin.
So here's the math. 60 planks, 120" x 93" = 900+ screws.
Bronze ones. Stainless ones. Straight. Phillips. Stripped. Snapped.
And that's just the bridge.
First, let’s roll the clock back to last summer. There’s our bridge. Look closely, see all the missing plugs over screws fastening it down. From what I’d been told, the former owner was very fond of his power sander. Evidence is all over the boat, where teak has been sanded clear down to the fasteners in many places. What had once been 1/2" thick is now down to 1/4" or less.
The sad fact is the decks look dismal from above, and from below… well… here’s a few thousand words in photo form.
Leaks, leaks, and more leaks. Of course, this was aggravated by one or more run-ins of deck bedding versus hydraulic steering fluid. We’re only too aware that the upper helm had more than once leaked, and in lowest spots of the bridge, (made even lower by years of zealous oversanding) the fluid ate through the bedding, through the bedding around the screws, and eventually, well, see above and below.
Also, notice what resembles a hole concealed beneath the headliner. That’s just what it is. A nice big hole, where the cables run up to the radar mast. You can see the mast in the photo from last summer. The bedding around that mast had long since failed, and the hole and the leaks it created are one of the reasons we’ll be replacing that mast. We plan to set up a mast with a steadying sail, and the radar will be set on that mast, with all cables route properly as not to lead water into the cabin. But that’s another project.
Some plugs have managed to stay, but some with the aid of a pick they can be persuaded out. The bronze screws beneath, on the other hand…
…are another story. Some come agreeably. Some snap at the head. Some strip out. They’re almost like machine screws, not very long, and blunt-tipped, and they go only so deep into the very very thick fiberglass beneath. But here and there, some have been replaced with much longer stainless wood screws, and these go further, down into the teak coring beneath the glass. There is, in places, some delamination, but far as we can tell it seems very slight. I’m sure given more time it would have progressed.
And so here’s where we stand. The planks are coming up in reasonable order. The fiberglass subdecking will need to be cleaned, any delamination addressed, all screw holes (hundreds) drilled out and epoxied closed. And then, well, that’s to be determined. PlanA. My hope is we can salvage the original decking, I’ve seen it done, by epoxying it down to sheets of marine plywood, and refastening that to the subdecking. That’s how they do teak decking these days on new builds. No screws. Of course we’ll have to re-plug all the screw-holes in the teak, so in the end it would look identical to the original decking. It depends on how easily I can clean down the old bedding to prep the wood for epoxy. Plan B. Frank’s looking into salvaged teak, which would be cut to size and epoxied down in the same manor as Plan A. Plan C. New teak. Less labor than A or B, more $$$s. Plan D. Flexi-teak or some simular product, but again, more $$$s. One final note as we forge ahead. This is just the bridge. Eventually the cockpit, forward and side decks will all require the same attention.
