22nd August 2010

It was a nice day weather wise so off with the canopy so I could see how things we going and have a bit of a clean up, shes almost back to bare wood and is looking boat like, the front cabin is all done. You can see the cockpit is almost back together and the rear roof is looking good on its new gas struts.

15th August 2010

What a surprise, more rot, this time its on the starboard side, next to the cockpit. There is a rotten patch on the side, about 6 inches by 2 feet and a 2 foot x 2 foot hole in the bottom.  Out with the plunge saw and the angle grinder.

 

8th August 2010

At last I managed to get round to working on the sliding roof, its not complete but I'm pleased with it so far. All but one of the supporting timbers that make it up was ok so it only needed one slat to be made, however the sides were too far gone so a couple of 3" x 2" timbers and a lot of sanding later and they were shaped.

The original roof was covered in 12mm plywood, but the roof was very heavy and you needed some muscles to slide it, the new version is made of 9mm which hasn't altered its strength but made it a little lighter.

   

By the time I had finihed the root it was getting late in the evening so one of the jobs that needed doing was filling the screw holes where the new roof was bonded to the old one, so 5 pots of epoxy filler later and it looks like the roof is covered in cotton balls.

  

 Its been a milestone of a weekend, the last patch of rot was cut from the deck and replaced.

There are only a couple of minor jobs left to do and that will be all the repairs above the water line complete. Its been a long year so far, but I reckon another 4-6 weeks and she'll be ready to go back on the water.

1st August 2010

I only managed to spend one day on the boat this weekend, but managed to cut out the windows that make up the windscreens. It might look simple, but to cut the first window out took nearly three hours, the actual cutting only took 30 mins, slowly moving round with the jigsaw so it doesn't damage the wood.

The other 2.5 hours were taken up by marking it out, making a template from the old window, making sure its centred.  The window actually gets aligned from the inside as that is the horizontal reference point.  To then transpose it to the outside required me to drill some small holes on the outer edge of the template at the exact middle of the horizontal and vertical edges.  The template can then be ligned up on the outside using those four hours and then the window cut out.

To round the corners off I bought a sanding drum kit that you attach to your drill, then carefully and I mean carefully round the corners as sandpaper on the end of a drill removes wood at a rapid rate of knots!