Work Day 3

2/15/13
Today we tackled the right side seat in the cabin.  According to the surveyor the seats had the highest moisture content so I wanted to look at them to understand what 35% moisture looks like w/r to the fiberglass delamination.  After yesterday I had mixed feelings, it was good to get all that wet and watery crap out which we never would have dried out by waiting or heat guns.  However, I still really don't know what to expect in the central area we are stepping on, is it full of water? Is the fiberglass molding etc...  I am hoping today will give us good insight into the overall shape of the fiberglass hull.

So it was pretty quick work after ripping out the left bench the day before. We got in quick with a sawzaw and an angle grinder.  The back part of the bench is a pain to cut because it is under the lip of the deck and if you are not paying attention you can puncture the hull.  So the trick is to cut close but not too close. We will go back and grind down the remaining lip later.  We did not take out as many foam pieces from the starboard side but we did take a few from the bow area.  The seat was in considerably better shape with little delamination and rot in the wood, the port side was far worse. However there was one bad find.  Looking forward  on the starboard it was clear how rotten the wood was in the "cabin" area.

Look at the starboard side forward and you will see there is about an inch between plywood and fiberglass, it has really rotted and expanded. This means we will most likely replace the forward deck as well :(

We junked quite a bit over the last two days, here is a quick pick of our dumpster full of "fillings".  Those foam balls were a pain in the ass to clean and even after vacuuming carefully they still got everywhere.  Apparently when the garbage truck came for the dumpster it was quite a disaster....glad I wasn't at the shop then!

Here is the port bench and you can see the wood condition

Speaking of the shop we have a really great deal.  Storage is $2 a day and then working is $1 per hour outside with all the tools you can imagine for free while you work.  You name it they have it.  So I want to keep these guys happy with me, even though I mucked up their shop with all these damn balls. They are all over the yard. Ehhh what you gonna do, we were pretty clean about it and they are mostly all gone.

Here is a quick shot of the boat with both sides cut out.  Surprisingly the center is still really stable and held both dan and I on at one point.  There is nothing below the aft end of the center cabin floor (plywood and fiberglass), and the forward portion is reinforced by a fiberglass bilge rectangle that bears most of the weight.


A quick pic of Dan working on the port side of the boat throwing out rotted foam core into the dumpster

Tomorrow we will tackle the remaining floor and cut it out.