Work Day 5

Today we could not do very much because in Sunday Oklahoma is pretty much closed.  We wanted to get started laying out the cabin floor with marine grade plywood. The local store has two sheets left so I asked them to set it aside but of course could not work on it today because they were closed.

So we continued to clean the hull and get rid of fiberglass dust.  We also used a broom to get the last piece of flotation foam out of the bow.  As of today their are no longer any plastic "dammits" aka beads in the boat.  The shop was happy to never see those things again.  We took a more detailed look at the bilge fiberglass which was starting to mold.

This is black mold on the bottom of the bilge box.  It can be cleaned up by bleach.

With no plywood we began to tackle the keel.  So we grinded away to see what we would find.  It wasn't pretty. The keel was damp, not oozing with water but damp.  There were some splits that just continued into the keel. After 2-4 grinds we decided not to grind anymore and follow. We drilled two holes to help dry it out.  When I get epoxy in next week we will inject it into the cracks and then glass the crap out of it.  Should be ok.

See how the crack just keeps going back....This was after two grinds...

Not sure what exactly the keel is made of it looks like hardened foam with lead chunks in it.

 Having only spent an hour working we started looking at other projects we can tackle.  We came up with two.  First to look at the "dent" in the side of the hull from the trailer.  Basically trailer supports were too thin so it was putting pressure on the hull. I suppose it didn't help that we had to stand and work in the boat all the time.  So its kind of a priority to fix. It will also affect painting the boat.  There is no damage to the fiberglass as seen from the inside of the hull but its an obvious dent.  So to release some pressure we took out the wood chunk pressing the spot.  With the spot off pressure, it didn't pop out but the trailer needs to be rebuilt so this does not continue and we can paint.  Not sure what the solution is here.  May be to just leave it.

This is the wood pressing against the boat.

So we thought about how to relieve the pressure and take the boat off the trailer. Without boat stands its pretty tough.  I called a place in tulsa and asked to rent they will get back to me next week. I am not willing to spend $400 on boat stands.  One solution is to use the shop's hydraulic car lift with straps attached to lift the boat up. If the shop is ok with this, we will have a solution to relieve the pressure and paint the boat.  I would prefer this.