Northern Yacht Restoration

Iota Refit | January 14, 2008

After leaving the core over the weekend, I began this morning by removing the weights and plastic. Then, I sanded the newly-cored areas as necessary to remove any high spots of epoxy that had oozed up through the edge gaps, as well as to clean up the epoxied top surface of the core. Afterwards, I cleaned up to get ready for the next steps.

Next, I made some paper patterns of the areas to receive new fiberglass. Over the weekend, I'd made the decision to use all new fiberglass on all areas, and to abandon the thought of reusing the sidedeck panels. It seemed more straightforward and I could better control the quality. So I patterned all areas, bringing the pattern out roughly to the edge of the ground, tapered area.

I brought the patterns down to my work table and used them to cut two layers of 17008 E-glass fabric for each section. I made the first piece full size according to the pattern, and the second piece 1" smaller in all dimensions for a staggered edge. I used the same paper pattern for each of the two pieces, but simply drew a new line 1" in from the pattern on the second piece, using a 1" wide ruler.

I was pleased to find that the largest pieces, on the foredeck, would fit within the 38" width of the fabric, so there'd be no need to piece in the material.

I spent most of the remainder of the day working on some final touches before I could apply the glass to the deck. During core installation, I'd left openings around hardware installations and the chainplates, and now needed to fill these with solid glass as required. This was a straightforward task, but the chainplates required a bit of extra attention.

I didn't want to lose the existing slots in the deck, since properly repositioning and recutting them is a chore best avoided when possible. To that end, I applied a heavy coat of paste wax to the old chainplates (they're due to be replaced) and temporarily inserted them in the slots. Then, I packed thickened epoxy around them and into the voids beneath the deck edge, which I'd left open during the other pre-core work last week. I installed the solid fiberglass--5 layers of 1708--in the openings where required around both chainplates and in the sidedeck core, though I didn't get to the foredeck areas before the end of the day. To fill the remaining space, I applied thickened epoxy to bring the areas up even with the core.

Once the epoxy around the chainplates had begun to cure, I removed the chainplates, leaving the slots in place and open.

I also used more of the thickened epoxy to fill around some of the edges of the core in the sidedecks, so as to create a smooth, filleted transition between the core and the tapered glass edge over which the new fiberglass could lay.