110 Cookson Lane | Whitefield, ME 04353 | 207-232-7600 | tim@lackeysailing.com
Ashantee | Friday, January 23, 2015
The first task of the day was to wash and sand as needed the new fiberglass on the poop deck.
Preparing for the day's work ahead, I vacuumed and solvent-washed the entire deck before continuing, and also taped over the undersides of various fastener holes to prevent epoxy from passing all the way through into the cabin or lockers during the next steps.
Next, in the cockpit, I patterned, cut, and dry-fit the new balsa core for the cockpit sole, then filled the open edges around the flange as needed before installing the new core in thickened epoxy adhesive, using all the same processes as elsewhere on deck.
In addition to the various repairs that needed to be filled and faired in with the deck, the heavy sanding had thinned the gelcoat exposed plenty of laminate skin coat beneath, which contained numerous small air pockets and voids. This, along with a few vestiges of old molded nonskid pattern and minor unevenness from the sanding and old coatings removal, required me to apply a skim coat of epoxy fairing compound over the entire deck, the first stage of the fairing and surfacing process ahead.
I began with the coachroof and cabin top. For the newly-installed laminate, I coated the entire surface with the fairing compound, beginning to fill the weave of the cloth and various known low spots. There'd be several additional applications in the days to come. Meanwhile, I skim-coated the adjacent areas to fill the small voids in the gelcoat and exposed original laminate, plus core inspection holes I'd drilled earlier. This application, while covering all areas, was quite thin, and certainly wasn't going to complete the process by itself, but would work to later highlight areas requiring the most additional work.
Moving to the staging, I repeated the process on the remaining deck areas, including the cabin trunk sides, which didn't need a full skim coat but required various pinhole/air pocket filling in the old gelcoat. I left the cockpit alone for the moment, to be handled in a separate operation later. I filled all the fastener holes I'd prepared earlier, and began the process of fairing in the newly-repaired areas as needed.
Total Time Billed on This Job Today: 6
Hours
