June 16, 2016
Rhodes 3
Thursday
Continuing where I left off, I sanded the remainder of the hull–the entire port side and transom, working through 40 and 80 grit paper to remove the heavy, cracked old coatings. The gelcoat, particularly close to the waterline, featured various heavy cracks and crazing, as well as pockmarks and areas where the gelcoat had cracked away, along with some older repairs. The worst area was a few feet aft of the stem.
Under all the paint on the transom, I uncovered an old name, the ghost of which remained in the original gelcoat: Glass Sloop. I’m sure that owning a boat made from fiberglass was a jaw-dropping novelty in 1957. (Amazingly, there are some even today who still feel fiberglass boats are something newfangled and somehow unworthy. Silly them.)
Next, I finished up the deck sanding to remove the old coatings. The deck gelcoat was badly crazed beneath and would require a fair bit of work to achieve a reasonable substrate for paint. My hand for scale.
Most of the interior of the boat–at least the hull areas–required just a brief-ish scuffing with coarse paper, as the existing paint was sound and well-adhered, and there was no reason to go further.
The cockpit seats/air tanks required more substantial sanding to remove the flaky old coatings back to the (as expected) crazed and cracked original gelcoat.
There were several old repairs and/or areas that would require minor repair on the air tanks and near the centerboard trunk.
Additionally, the mast partners hole in the aft part of the foredeck had apparently been damaged long ago, probably when the mast was being stepped or unstepped and started to flop sideways before it was pulled all the way out of (or into) the hole, and the old repair was unworthy; my initial sanding removed the floppy, dry old cloth and shattered laminate from one side of the opening, but I’d surely come back to this for additional demolition work before working to rebuild the opening properly. This looks like a sad little lopsided heart.
Total time billed on this job today: 7.75 hours
0600 Weather Observation:
50°, clear. Forecast for the day: Sunny, high 70s