| 1975 Dufour 27
Refit | Wednesday, September 24, 2008 During the morning, I completed the deck hardware removal, including the manual bilge pump, some other installations in the cockpit, the genoa tracks, traveler, and chainplates. I found that the tracks were secured with machine screws set into threaded backing plates or encapsulated nuts, allowing access from the top--which was good since there was no access from beneath anyway. Two brackets, one on each side of the boat at the gunwale near amidships, turned out to also be secured in such a way that I could remove them without any access to their undersides, so I removed those as well, never to return. Afterwards, I stored away the various pieces and parts for safekeeping until they'd be needed again later in the project. |
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Next, I covered the deck with some lightweight plastic to protect it and, more importantly, the interior from dust and debris during the next step: bottom stripping. With some temporary help on hand for the afternoon, I removed several layers of blue antifouling paint from the hull, generally leaving the appendages for later. Scraping and sanding our way through the material revealed some red antifouling paint beneath the blue, and beneath that a thin layer of a pinkish material that appeared to be a skim coat of polyester body putty--Bondo or similar. I left a bit of the bottom paint at the top edge for now so that I wouldn't lose the paint line, but I'd address that further later on, when I sanded the remainder of the hull. Interestingly, I discovered that there was no gelcoat on most of the bottom, save for a strip up near the waterline that seemed to have survived whatever process had been undertaken on the bottom at some time in the distant past. I also discovered an old molded blue gelcoat stripe at the top edge of the bottom paint, an factory original that was clearly far too low and had been raised some time ago. The ungelcoated fiberglass appeared to be in good condition. |
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