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. |