Day 2

Day 2:

Finished up on Noel at Noon... Had the mast pulled at 1:00.

Once the mast was down, I cut out a 12 x 24 inch section of the top skin. The inner skin was cut on each side of the deck beam by compression on both sides, I taped the crack to keep from gluing the old beam to the skin. I tacked a nail to hold down the junk inner skin flap (technical terminology...) and propped up the skin on both sides until it was in a fair curve. I pulled out the balsa core, routed out the punky stuff (starboard side) and cleaned up the good balsa around the peremiter. I packed the gap full of thickened epoxy (cabosil) and proceeded to lay in 4 layers of 1708. When that had kicked and was starting to cool off, I laid down 4 more layers. 8 layers is just a touch under 13/16ths of solid fiberglass and epoxy. Heavy, but compression shouldn't ever be an issue again...

I pulled out the through hulls in the head. One was a ball valve threaded onto a flush mount through hull fitting. (boo hiss on ball valves) Since I'm flying solo... I unthreaded the backing nut, gave it a whack with a hammer to generate some clearance and slipped in a sawazall... The other was a 60's Pearson special... solid 13/16ths or so block of mahogany, fiberglass encapsulated over a fiberglass tube/mound with the sea cock smushed in to the polyester resin and stuck forever...

I used a cut off wheel on my angle grinder to cut through the fiberglass around the edges. I used a chisel to clean off the area around the bolts. 3 came out, 1 broke. Then I used my chisel to wedge the old fiberglass off of the wood. Once it was free on one corner, I put a pipe over the end of the through hull, and performed a ABYC (American boat and Yacht Council) test... to see if I could hang my body weight off of it without it breaking loose. It did...

Then I used my sawzall to cut the rest of the fiberglass off of the block, and a chisel to clean out the wood. I changed my angle grinder from a cement cutting disc (They last forever on fiberglass...) to a 36 grit flap disc, and cleaned up the inside... Then went outside and ground down both holes prepping them for glass in the morning. I've got it in my mind to set up a wet out station and do all four at once, wetting out on the bench and carrying over to the hole... my glass is all pre-cut, did that earlier this week.

Also got the old speedometer fitting out. That little plastic booger was really in there. Wouldn't budge... so I cut off the flange on the outside, cut off the guts on the inside... and cut the tube into 4 pieces. I'm not sure what sealant was used... but it took almost as long to clean that out as it did to remove the fitting.

Then it was 10:00 pm, and I decided the day was done.

Zach

P.S. I love my full face respirator and carbon filters... beats the heck out of the N95 and P100 cartridges I've used on a 3m half face up till now.