| Sunday, June 8, 2003 A few days after cutting
      off the bulk of the deck, I found some time to finish the job.  We
      had left much of the molded toerail in place, along with some sections of
      the deck near the stem and around the chainplates.  Now it was time
      to remove the rest of this material. Using
      both my reciprocating saw and jig saw, I removed the rest of the
      fiberglass toerail, cutting more or less along the natural seam between
      hull and deck.  I erred on the side of staying above the line, as I
      can always grind it down to the exact height later. (Any unevenness of the
      cut seen in photos of the job can be attributed to this.)  In an hour
      or less, I had the entire port toerail, and the remains of the starboard
      one, cut down, and the last section of foredeck removed.  I also cut
      down the remaining forward bulkhead (the mast area) to remove the ragged
      pieces of tabbed-on decking that remained, though most of the bulkhead
      remained in place.  I
      discovered that the upper part of the hull was surprisingly thin. 
      Discounting the thickness of the tabbing that had been used to secure the
      deck and hull together, the upper portion of the hull shell at the gunwale
      was only about 1/4" or so.  The thickness in the bottom, where
      visible around old through hull installations, is about 3/4". 
      These thicknesses are substantially less than what I have found on #381 Glissando--I
      found about 5/8" of glass near the gunwale on the port bow when I
      installed a holding tank vent fitting there, and anywhere from 3/4"
      to 1-1/4" of glass in portions of the bottom.  In the photo, you
      can see the line between the tabbing and the hull shell, and my finger is
      there for reference.
 The
      photos below show the hull after removing toerails and other remaining
      bits, and were taken after the boat had been moved to her new location in
      my yard. |