Work Day 6 & Vacation

Sorry for not posting for so long, took a two week hiatus from the project for some real sailing in SoCal.   Got a work posting to Los Angles for two weeks so took every advantage and went sailing as much as possible.  The day before I left did some work on the boat though.


Work Day 6:

I forked over the $$ for two major items this week. First, two sheets marine grade plywood 3/4" and 1/2" used for the cabin and other stuff.  Second, I bought a large amount of epoxy west systems resin.  The resin should arrived while I was in LA but did do a little with the plywood before I left.


First we went to sketching out what the new cabin floor might look like. We are still debating wether or not to keep the original bilge fiberglass tub. The advantage to this is that we can secure keel boats more easily and it already has fit.  I think we will end up cutting a hole in the plywood and dropping the bilge tank back in.  That's far down the road. So at first we took a few quick measurements with cardboard to try to cut the stringers.  We were thinking 3 stringers going across the hull to support the weight of the cabin occupants.

This is our map of the hull for cutting the plywood

After taking a cardboard cut out of the hull we then traced it onto the plywood.  After cutting it out we would then go to the boat and test fit it.  After trimming down several times we let them be.  These cuts after all are rough because we are still going to sand them down to apply the actual floor on top. They just need to be close enough for epoxy to seal.

fitting the wood 

This is basically how we would line up the cardboard when we cut.

We were in a rush to get out of the shop before they closed so don't have any great photos of the floor laid in the hull.  It was actually a pretty dang good fit.  We just did linear cuts so it looked like two triangles and square in the middle.  It worked out pretty well because you can see there is not a huge gap between it and the wall, which will make epoxy easy.

Floor laying in the hull.

Before we left we moved the boat to a more permanent storage yard and covered it in tarps for any weather.  Which was a good move, it snowed about a foot and half while I was gone.   Have not been back to the boat since, so let's hope everything sealed out the water because the plywood was in the hull!

Now more about vacation!

Got in some great sailing. Particularly notable was a Friday afternoon sail when I got off work early, got to take the boat up to Santa Monica and float around until sunset.  Coming from a snow storm the day before to this was pretty ideal.

Literrally rolled off the plane at 4:05 PM and was on the water sailing for sunset by 4:45 PM.  What a life!!

Playa del rey in the sunet

Sailing back friday evening

View from one of the 6 sunset cruises I went on

Other than all the great people got to go sailing with met one interesting person.  The boat in the slip next to us had always fascinated me. I had never in three years seen the owner, and the boat was always covered.  But I could tell from the hull and the mast she was a classic boat. On the way to work one morning I met the owner, Franco.  What a great guy with incredible sailing knowledge and experience.  Franco actually turned out to be the proud owner of a 1947 Luders 16, the bigger and older cousin of the boat I am restoring. So it was great to compare notes with him on restoration and swap stories. Hope to get back to MDR soon and go sailing in his beautiful boat.  One shocking fact was that his mast was wood (forgive me I do not recall what specific type) from 1947, still preserved and working fine!  Good ole' boats last a lifetime!