| Bolero
Project |
November 12, 2007 Over a day or two back in September, my wife Heidi worked sporadically to remove some of the deck hardware from Bolero; I didn't post any details about this previously. |
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Over the past weekend, I rearranged the shop bay so that Bolero was more in the center of the space, giving me room to work on all sides of her as the project got underway in earnest. I leveled the boat, or at least the trailer, using a level on the flat keel support; later, I'll confirm how this translates to the boat itself, though having the boat level at this early stage was not critical. Finally, today marked the true beginning of the Bolero project. After wrapping up some work on another project in the shop, I began this afternoon by setting up staging around the boat so that I could work comfortably around her from outside. |
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With the staging up and secured, I began to remove more of the deck hardware and woodwork. Over a couple hours, I removed most of the hardware remaining around the cockpit, including the winches, cockpit seats, tiller, and other miscellany. I also removed the old cockpit trim and coamings (if you can call them that); it wasn't possible to save any of the wood, not that it specifically had any use for the future anyway. Most of the fasteners securing the old hardware were bronze and in incredibly poor condition, showing signs of significant corrosion and dezincification. I had to use a Sawz-all to cut many of the fasteners away, since the nuts wouldn't come off. I saved all the old hardware, though most of it won't be reused in this project. |
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The mainsheet traveler was a travesty of severe corrosion, and the poster child for galvanic action resulting from years of neglect and the dissimilarity of metals: aluminum track and stainless steel fasteners. Before I set to removing the traveler, I noticed that the track was severely corroded in several places, to the extent that the corrosion had virtually "exploded" portions of the track outwards from the fasteners as the dusty corrosion searched for some space in which to expand. I knew I'd never get the fasteners out, so used the saw to cut them all just below the track (the track was mounted on a wooden riser). As I lifted the track off the riser, it simply disintegrated in one area, breaking in two at one of the bolt holes. |
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