Work Day 4

12/16/13

   Today we finished ripping out the central floor of the cabin.  Before we did there was a lot thought that went into how to do it.  Once we got rid of this floor there would be no place to stand inside the boat that could support our weight.  The fiberglass hull is designed to support at least 52 lbs/sq inch because this is the pressure of sea water.  But to put 150 lbs on a small area would probably not be good for it. 

Preparation: What to do with the bilge and keel bolts.  I was really nervous about this section.  I don't know that much about keel bolts other than they are supposed to support your keel and you want to make sure they are not rusted and serviceable.  I knew the keel would not fall off if I un did the nuts grounding it to the fiberglass, but I don't want to mess with structural integrity of the keel. After doing some research it seems as though the bolts are primarily for support and integrity in running aground.  So, it would be ok to unbolt them if they are left alone.  

One might ask why not just leave the bilge alone and build back around it?  Well, part of our leak problem stems from the bilge. There are several cracks in the fiberglass in the bottom which have lead to leaking below decks.  I could just try to glass over these and leave the bilge where it is, but run into the same leaking problems potentially. So I opted to cut around the bilge and then deciede how to remove it.

Leaky bilge....leaky bilge....

Once I removed the keel bolts its was obvious that the bolts were new the person didn't know what they were doing.  They were not sealed in there!!! So water just leaked along the bolts through the bilge which led to a little mold build up on the bottom of the fiberglass bilge.  

You can see the black part indicating water penetration

See the cracks? Also note the displacement from the rod to the fiberglass.

This meant the box had to be pulled and remolded or at least repaired.  So we went about cutting out the box.  We supported ourselves while cutting on two by fours.  This allowed us to be pretty much anywhere in the cabin without really putting weight on the fiberglass hull.  The actual cutting took about 30 minutes to get through all the wood and strong fiberglass.  The integrity was impressive for 40 year old work that had no support under it.  

Here is a picture of success!

After we popped off the bilge box what we found under it was lots and lots of caulking/marine glue.  Some of it was damp so I hope drying this out will solve most of our keel problems.  I am not comfortable with relaying this, and it looks very stable so I am going to leave it alone.  

We spent the rest of the day prepping the hull walls by sanding them down to be ready for fiberglassing when it arrives next week.  Then we finished up with the shop vac sucking out all the fiberglass residue. By the end of the day myself and the tools were all coated in a white dust cover.  Which reminds me to plug safety here. Working with this stuff is really bad for your health, make sure you are wearing a respirator and gloves as well as covering all body parts. I have a full white suit but did not break it out because we didn't do that much sanding today. Just wore long sleeves and pants. When we paint I will go full body suit.  

One of the things we found which was a real pay off was some really rotted plywood below where the metal mast support would lay.  Dan thinks it was originally 3/4" plywood that has swelled up to 2".  It is so wet to the touch you can squeeze water out of it, and you can tell it was bending under pressure.  This was a great find that will need to be replaced.  Without ripping up the deck would have never known!  Once we replace this the mast will be able to lay solidly!

You can see the glue holding in the bolts and keel and further forward the rotted wood below the mast support

The great thing about the end of the day was how dry the hull was, there was no standing water (it all seemed to be in the foam bricks).  There seemed to be no damage to the hull from the section we cut out. We will need to look at the forward section more, there is still some foam in the bow and the deck covers what we have access to.  For tomorrow or the next day though....

This is the remaining floatation material in the bow....

Tomorrow we will start the wood prep by tracing the hull outline and prefabricating the marine plywood for laying in the hull.  Then we will glass next week and lay the plywood in.

Today's work was about 5 hours or so.

This is looking aft, note the compartment aft is sealed air tight to float the boat if the cabin area is punctured.  There is some water leaking in from standing water which we dried up.  This bulkhead will provide a model for how to install our plywood bulkheads for the main cabin.