Lackey Sailing | Calliope Girl 15

November 16, 2023

Calliope Girl 15

Thursday

Next on the agenda was the settees. The plywood tops were tabbed to the hull along their outer edges, so to begin I used a grinder and cutoff wheel to cut through this tabbing. From there, it was a pretty simple matter to pull out the plywood, as there was little else holding it but some old screws and cleats that were already failing. From there, I removed the vertical bases, which were also “tabbed” to the hull along their inside edges, but this tabbing had either already failed (starboard) or was so weak as to provide no resistance to hand removal. I cut each of the plywood panels in half to make handling and disposal easier.

With the additional space afforded by the settees’ removal, I chipped away the small section of cabin sole on the port forward side, which took much longer than removing all the rest of the structure. Removal was simply a matter of getting a tool between the adhesive (definitely either 4200 or 5200) and the hull–fairly laborious, but fortunately the area was small.

With the debris cleared away, and all my tools and things stored elsewhere for now, there was no better time to get in and sand the hull where the settees and galley cabinetry had been, along with the underside of the deck. This heavy bulk sanding removed the old and failed coatings, remnants of old tabbing, and cleaned up the areas to prepare for new work ahead. The sanding and cleanup consumed the remainder of the day. There’d be additional detail work ahead, as there were still old cleats in place that I needed to remove, along with the old battery trays, but the worst of the surface prep was in the books.