I took on a major deck repair this week. Should be the biggest one I have to do on 101 before the Transpac. It was a pretty big job, and took the better part of 3 days, but it should be worth it! Also ordered Lithium batteries and lightweight solar panels this week! The boat is coming toghether, week by week. Moore <3
This is what I began with a few days ago, after cutting out the top skin of the fiberglass deck. The deck had been leaking somewhere and the balsa core was wet, just forward of the traveller. I had to cut further and further into the deck, chasing the water until I got to dry balsa wood. The deck slopes down towards the toe rail, so it's pretty obvious that water leaked in and then seeped down with gravity. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed to find how widespread the moisture in the core was, but it needed to be fixed. This is my only soft spot in the deck, and my largest deck repair that I plan on doing before Transpac.
This is after I cored the deck with foam. I used core-cell foam from Svendsen's. It seems to be super strong and is very light. What I did was clean up the bottom skin of the deck (after removing the old core). Then I faired in some holes (rom old deck hardware) with structural filler. After tha, I laid in some epoxy and painted it around before laying in the foam. I filled in all small voids that I could with more foam, and eventualy filled in all of the tiny voids with more structural filler. I didn't have to use that much though, so hopefully I didn't add much weight to the boat. Finally, I put wax paper over it from the grocery store. And then,
This is a pretty agricultural method of avoiding air pockets in my lay-up, but I used a water jug, cooler full of water and a plastic bin full of boat materials to weight down my foam while the epoxy kicked off. Yes, that is the main sheet, spin halyard and backstay line being used to keep things form falling overboard. :) This method actually works very well.
This is the almost finished product. I prepped all of the deck around the repair, stripping all the way down to the fiberglass and prepping the whole area for new fiberglass. I faired any final voids with filler and then laid up some epoxy and put on 3 layers of glass, one by one. I worked out all of the air bubbles and let it cure all day. It's not fully done yet, but i'll assure you there's no more soft spot! I invested a lot of time into this this week, but it should be a really good repair for a long time. Super stoked to have it almost done!
Next week i'm going to being my two other deck repairs, construction of the hard dodger, and hopefully begin installing my batteries and electrical components. There is a Singlehanded Transpac cruise-in this weekend at Encinal Yacht club that i'll be attending, and i'm sailing in another Estuary beer can race on Sunday.
101 out.