Very Puzzle Like

Marine grade plywood will be fashioning the area under Whoopee's mast step. Around the bolts and then layered outboard. A big plywood, thickened epoxy and fiberglass mat sandwich. All pulled together, for eternity, with SS screws.

work progresses

Work progresses with fiberglass prep. Epoxy and fiberglass are really hard, so sanding them in a little area is a bit of a challenge.

In the midst of it.

Coveralls and a hooded sweatshirt mean I can get dirty while wearing pajamas.

Work progresses with the cleaning up of the top layer of new fiberglass work, below and forward of the mast step I would love to use the Festool, but there is a bit of a size restriction. I have my chisel on a stick and sander on a stick. Chisel on a stick is a 12" oak handle on an old chisel. The sander on a stick is a 3/4" drum sander on a 3/8" metal dowel.

I really like this thing. The thing, is a festool sander and a festool vacuum. The sander is very much like an angle grinder, but it has velcro sanding disks of different grits and attach to a soft or hard pad. The pièce de résistance is that when you rotate the handle a dust shield rotates and captures most particulates. Even though I wear a respirator, it is nice to greatly minimize all of that pesky fiberglass dust. I have stated to Megan that if there was a tool I would marry it would be this thing.

Fun With Fiberglass

Fiberglass can be fun. I want to connect both sides of the hull and reinforce below the mast step. I started by filling in the area of where the outer stem as with polyester and fiberglass strips. Polyester resin is good here because it is a non-structural area, and it is less expensive than epoxy. Once the outer stem area was filled I wanted to bridge the gap between each half of the hull, distributing the forces of the mast step over a large area. My first attempt to do this was not very successful. First it was to cold out and the epoxy was to cold. The colder it is the more difficult it is for the resin to soak into the glass. I did not wet out the glass enough, and after it cured it did not stick. I was able to remove a majority of the bad glass, it did not stick like it should, but it was still really stubborn. Death of a thousand cuts, access to the area is very tight and the only thing I had to use was a Dremel and chisel.

The picture above shows the cleaned up result. I left the dry glass that was directly under the mast step. This layer is in addition to the polyester filling below. The next layer will bond to this layer and to each side of the hull.

One positiv

e that came from this was my discovery of the innermost layer of original fiberglass and it's lack of resin. The layer closest to the wo

od would have been resin starved as the wood absorbed the resin before it cured.

You can see an area peeling up.

I removed all of this layer on both port and starboard, prepared for more glass and put down another 2 layers of biaxial structural fiberglass and a layer of fiberglass mat.

I then cleaned up this layer and put in a more extensive round of glass spanning the stem and criss crossing under the mast step.

This is where I am now. I am in the process of preparing this layer for additional fiberglass and plywood.

More INfo

The area under the mast step is getting reinforced. Multiple sets of layers are going to need to be put down, but after each layer the area needs to be cleaned up; sanded and or in the case of epoxy the amines removed. Amines are an oily blush that rise to the outside surface of the of the epoxy product I am using. The area currently under repair is at the pointy end of the boat, so there is not much room. Whoopee is mostly a wide boat, so the area under repair is not as difficult to get to. I guess in a way it was good the centerboard trunk leaked. Its removal greatly facilitates access to the stem area.

Pictures to follow.

A word on what's happening

As you'll see with this process, and the pictures I will continue to add to this site, the work to rebuild where the wood was rotted away will happen in stages, each layer applied one at a time with prep in between each additional layer.

First Look at Repairs

Here are a few pictures of repair work, related to building up where stem used to be.