Work Day 7

Today was pretty light on work.  We pulled the boat out of storage which was a little bit of a task.  It had snowed two weeks before.  When we put the boat away three weeks ago it was rushed to say the least.  It was dark and so cold that we could not feel our hands as we strapped down the tarps.  We tried to cover the entire boat so no water would leak in. We did this successfully, but when a foot or two of snow came along, the tarp caved into the cabin.   Did not leak, as best I could tell but collected several gallons of water.  This made me nervous because we did leave the plywood foolishly in the boat with the tarps over it.

The water we bailed out of the boat with a "big gulp" cup. Took about 15 minutes.  

 Though the tarp did hold 90% of the water, about 10% did get in some how and sat in the bottom of the hull. Which at this point was empty, so it was not really a big deal, just a pain because it mixed with the white balls of styrofoam.  Anyway once we bailed all of it out we brought it back over to the shop to start working on it again.

When we got to the shop I wanted to start on two things: 1. finishing the last deconstruction of the boat before we begin to rebuild!!!! Finally!  We need to cut out some of the wood in the forward cabin that is to far gone to repair.  2. Wanted to start working on the machine drilled holes in the hull.

I set out to cut away the forward cabin which was fiberglass with 3/4" ply under it.  I didn't want to create a task impossible to rebuild so tried to cut as tactically as possible. I decided to surgically cut where the plywood was the worst.

You can see the sharpie outline of where I want to cut here

Cut this cleanly with a jig saw, so it was pretty clean and painless compared to the other cuts we had been doing.  Also, because of this clean cut I am hoping to just rip the plywood of the fiberglass and then reuse the fiberglass. Or at the very least use it as a template to make new glass.  Then mount new plywood underneath the fiberglass and on to the old fiberglass hanging from the side as well.  After the cut was complete I was pleased with the remaining plywood, it was wet but not split apart.  Some places it drooped from the fiberglass, but that can be fixed easily with some epoxy drillings.  

after the cut

This is the wet wood remaining after the cut

Delaminated core on the right that was being surgically removed.

The other thing that was interesting after cutting this piece was seeing the support that was cut for the fiberglass below the mast support.  So the mast sits atop the cabin ceiling which is supported by a metal pole to the floor that I removed. Below the floor was some very very very vey very damage plywood we removed several stages ago.  Best guess is it was 3/4" ply but it was so swelled up it is impossible to know. So we will replace that when we put in the new floor.  Will probably have to remove the remnants of the wood from the glue base by tool. Then relay wood and glue in the old base.

You can see the dark stuff in the center of the epoxy glue is what is left of the wood for mast support

Tomorrow I will tackle the drilled holes. The first actual step in the positive direction, a rebuild not rip down project!  I am ready to put this boat back together, I have seen her bare.  Now its time to build her up...