Planning Planing Planing

So with all this ripping up of the boat, you may be wondering if I am a professional Chop Shop.  Not the case, I actually want to rebuild the boat ha ha!  So before we rip anything out we have a plan to install new items.  This post is to outline a few ideas we have going for restoration.

The Cabin:

Bolero's wood benches

The outside Cabin, is by far the biggest project.  Because we needed to rip it all up to dry out the boat and confirm everything was safe and stable, we needed a rebuild plan.  Luckily my internet research paid off, one of the boats I wanted to model my purchase after had an extensive blog about rebuilding it day by day.  In part, why I am blogging my progress.  In this blog, they basically have an similar empy hull situation, except they keep the floor middle floor section on their boat (we will gut ours).  Then they installed beautiful wood seats to the boat hull and to the solid fiberglass floor. They were stained and looked great.

You will noticethat the actual wood work surrounding the cabin on this model boat is quite similar to the Luders 21' stock woodwork (except that the seats are fiberglass).  

In this picture of Bolero's restoration you can see the prep that was done to install the wood benches.  This visual helps you to understand how the situation will be similar to ours.  The plan of attack is to simply glass up the hull some more and then mount the benches directly to the side of the hull.  The running debate is what to put on the bottom of the hull.  Dan suggested we do plywood supports similar to this:
 http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/glass-over-ply-rebuild-34113.html.  
Then we lay down wood slats across the bottom of the floor atop the support plywood and that will be the bottom.  Similar to the picture below, however the entire floor wood be wood slats.  I want wood slats on a portion of the floor. However, I could see the entire bottom as wood slats problematic.  Primarily because of dropping an item and then dealing with moving slats to get to it.  Also, water accumulation in the bottom of the hull would be another issue(or rather in section s of the hull).  Of course we are going to prep all the fiberglass with epoxy and primer anyway to stand up to anything we through at it.  My current opting is use the plywood supports dan is proposing and then lay plywood and fiberglass over the top to make a solid deck. Then create a bilge area with wood slats.  One advantage to Dan's idea is easy access to the hull and bottom of the boat for drilling (adding speed meter) or checking for waterThat is the basic layout plan for the outdoor cabin.

The rest of the boat doesn't need much planning, the aft and forward deck is in great shape just needs to be repainted. One issue I found is that the deck hardware was not properly sealed to the deck so there is some leaking around deck hardware. I will address this and remount deck hardware.  On the top deck, when it comes to repainting I might just sand and do wood teak style deck. I already know money will not allow for teak, but maybe cedar.  This of course is far down the road so we will evaluate budget when we arrive at that point.  

Below the water line:

We have several projects here.  Primarily the keel split.  After further investigation this split was most likely natural (the keel is made of two molds) or accelerated by water dripping and freezing in the keel. after drilling a check hole in the bulb I did not find water but did find damp wood. After checking a day or so later, it seemed as though the paint had dripped and indicated water seeped out.  This really means we need to dry from top down, and gut the cabin which we did.  Then I will drill maybe 5 holes in the bottom of the keel.  Use a light or heat gun to dry out.  Then plan to address the keel split further up by grinding and drying it out for a day or two.  I ordered fiberglass repair kit from west systems two days ago so it should get here soon.  After the keel is repaired I will fill the keel bulb drying holes with epoxy and then fair them out.  After that we will work on the two machine drilled holes.  Then finally we can begin to address painting.  

Painting the bottom will be quite a task.  We will start by chipping paint off which I think will knock out 25% of the boat paint because it is cracking in several places.  Then we will sand the rest down.  After that we will work on putting a barrier layer/primer layer down to prevent chicken pox.  We are thinking of a light bottom paint, because the boat will go faster and I do not plan on keeping it in the water for extended periods. I do want to just come to the boat sometime at the dock, but don't really want to pay for a dock the whole time and leave the boat there.  Plus the lakes are all some hours drive from me.  So it will be better if I plan it as a day trailer sailer.  This allows me to add light paint with less toxicity like VC-17 freshwater from Petit.  After putting on the bottom paint I will work on the side hull blue paint as well as the boot stripe.  Finally we will put back on the boat name....which is TBD.  Been told it is bad luck to rename the boat, but the jury is still out on a name.  

Canvas Cover- Depending on what kind of deck I end up installing I will make a cover for the entire deck or just for the cabin.  We will see, but this will be one of the last projects.  

Float How?  One thing I realized as we ripped out all these stupid styrofoam balls is, we will need to replace them at some point.  I am still researching how much flotation I legally and practically need. My view is that this boat will be in a lake always close to shore and if the fiberglass is punctured, well its not the end of the world if it sinks.  Would I be pissed yes, enough to make it unsinkable pouring foam atop foam? no.  When we take out the cabin seats, where foam was primarily, we will need to find a new location for foam. One option is just to place it in the bow and aft compartments and seal them up. I am all for this, it is simple and balances the boat.  The issue is how much foam to buy and what type. For this I need to calculate my buoyancy requirements.  Still looking into it but a ballpark figure is 14 cubic feet of 2lb density foam. I prefer to use foam that fills voids in chemical reaction as opposed to the blocks. But I have not looked at the price difference.  So we will see.  This is probably an issue I will phone a friend about.