Circe | Wednesday, July 8, 2009

I had to be out of the shop all morning, so I tried to make the most of the afternoon.

I decided to work on hardware removal.  Before starting, though, I removed all the remaining interior wood trim, mainly to get these obstructions out of the way; in particular, the v-berth fiddles and head doorway trim were impeding efficient access between the spaces, and with plenty of back-and-forth movement required for removing the hardware by myself, it seemed the right time to get the trim out of the way. 

    


With the interior made more user-friendly by the removal of the trim, I began at the stem and worked my way aft, removing the bow pulpit, bow chocks, bow cleat, several padeyes, and the four stanchion bases.  I removed the forward hatch and waste pumpout deck plate, as well as the plastic forward cowl vent (which was badly UV damaged and splintered upon removal) and the anchor line hawsepipe.  Though I didn't plan to re-use the fasteners, I stored the fasteners that I removed (and those that hadn't fallen into the bilge somewhere) in storage bags with their appropriate hardware for later inspection and reference.



         

     

Removing the anchor pipe and waste deck plate revealed my first look at the balsa core inside the deck.  In these two areas, the core appeared to be dry and sound, fortunately.  Later and throughout the initial deck-preparation processes, I'd do more to determine the condition of the deck core in other areas.
    
    

This brought me as far aft as the end of the forward cabin, so, having removed all the hardware in that area and at a logical stopping point, I decided to remove the ports, which would give me more airflow inside the boat (important, given the damp, moldy conditions throughout the as-yet unaccessed hidden spaces of the boat) and also provide convenient pass-throughs for tools, cords, and for clamping work lighting.

For each of the six aluminum opening ports, I removed the screws holding the exterior trim ring and placed them in their proper position on deck for future reference; then, I carefully removed the trim rings.  The ports had been sealed in silicone, but fortunately it didn't put up too much of a fight, so all the trim rings came off without damage or bending.  Then, from the inside, I pried the port body out of the opening.  Afterwards, I reunited each port with its trim ring, and installed the six screws in their proper locations for safekeeping and future reference, until such time as I was ready to address the ports in the future.


I followed the same basic process for each of the four deadlights in the saloon.  From inside, I removed the screws and set them on the settee in their proper orientation, and pried off the inner deadlight frame; outside the boat, I removed the outer frame and the tempered safety glass lights, and then reassembled each for storage and safekeeping.  This work brought me to the end of the day.



    

    


Total Time Billed on This Job Today:  4.25 hours

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