I spent a few days in sausalito last week. Alfonso helped me work on a few projects on the boat including cutting all of the uprights to support the floor, as well as fabricating the boards to cover the floor. He was also kind enough to let me crash at his place overnight. It was very stressful as usual driving the trailer through 19th street and across the Golden Gate Bridge. As I was pulling into sausalito, I went around a sharp right turn and the car made this awful sound like I had hit something, and the boat looked crooked on the trailer. My first thought was that one of the bunks had broken a and punched through the hull, but after careful inspection, nothing was wrong with the trailer or the boat. I had to drive to west marine down the street from his office once, and while turning sharp out of the driveway of west marine, I heard a big pop again. After returning home, I dropped off the expedition at our mechanic and there are two different problems with the suspenssion. Both problems are being fixed so we can tow the boat up to huntington.

Below is a video of some of the things I worked on in Sausalito.

I had to replace the dryrot flooring underneith a wall bulkhead and to do so, I made a 1/2″ thick fiberglass board and cut it to fit the wood that I chiseled out. It took quite a while to remove all the dead wood, and make it square enough to fit a new board in its place. The video below shows the new board installed, and held in place with temporary boards.

Last week dan was in town and he wanted to see how strong the fiberglass boards that I’ve been making are. I gave him a little scrap to try and chop with a hatchet. He was not very successful.

I’ve been spending much of my time working on the boat the past few weeks. If you don’t know, I broke the mast and the floor is covered with dry rot. I have already done a lot of work towards repairing the ballast tank. Our initial problem was the broken mast, but while inspecting the issues regarding the mast I discovered that I could have put my foot through the floor if I chose to. I called up my boat guy and then took the boat up there. We cut open the floor with a jigsaw in 4 places and discovered the problem. The floor was extremely rotten and the cancerous wood needed to be removed. I have grinded the nasty crap out, covered it with 7 layers of epoxy, and next I get to lay fiberglass on the underside of the floor to strengthen it. In the past week I’ve been making very strong fiberglass boards. Layers of fiberglass mat and eglass tape were covered with epoxy and laid on top of each other. 70 total layers make up each of the thicker boards and 4 hours of labor to cut each sheet and actually hand lay them. I’ve done this three times now and need to make one more board, which I’m not really looking forward to because it’s not very satisfying work. For the most part, these 12” x 24” boards are going to get cut up and used to make support bars for holding up the floor in the tank. They will form T shaped pieces where the top of the T is bonded to the floor and the shaft goes down and gets glassed to the bottom of the ballast tank. This will provide much better support for the floor, as many part of it are still weak from having rotten wood. The epoxy will seal it from getting worse, and the fiberglass will hold it together, but these floor supports will add an extra layer of security against any problems in the future.
This week is crunch time for getting the tank sealed up. Tuesday night I used the grinder to pull off 2” of gel coat around each of the four openings in the ballast tank to make room to seal the new floor. I’ll have to cut-to-size pieces of pressure treated marine grade plywood to lay in the openings and then seal with fiberglass. Before the tank gets sealed up though, I still need to lay fiberglass on the entire underside of the tank. I’m hoping I can get this done in a day, but who knows, it might take a bit longer than I’ve planned out. After the glassing of the inside of the tank is done, its time to install the new compression post, which will be made out of 6” PVC, strengthened with ½” PVC pipes inside filled with epoxy and fiberglass pieces. Imagine looking at a honeycomb, this is what the cross section of the compression post will look like.
On Wednesday I completed half of the in-tank fiber glassing. It was easier than I thought it would be, but it was really hot in the boat, even with a large fan moving all the air quickly. The heat combined with the fumes and the fact that I basically have my head upside down in a hole made me feel very nauseous. I got 25% done with the project and had to go jump in the pool and take a shower. I also ended up taking a much-needed nap to get rid of my headache. When I awoke over an hour later, I went to Ace Hardware to get some more blue gloves. I got a size larger this time and they fit a lot better. After eating dinner I went down and finished glassing the rest of the port side of the tank, except for the very front where the compression post will be. Tomorrow will be the day for finishing the rest of the glassing of the tank, and making the new fiberglass board for the ceiling of the tank at the compression post. To install this board, I will have to chisel out the wood flooring near the compression post and ballast valve to make room. This fiberglass board, made of roughly 70 layers of fiberglass, will replace the wood in this region for increased strength, and cover a portion of the hole in the floor in this area.