110 Cookson Lane | Whitefield, ME 04353 | 207-232-7600 | tim@lackeysailing.com
Only a relatively small amount of interior sanding remained for this bulk portion of the job; there'd be more to come later, but in terms of initial surface preparations I had areas of the quarterberth, galley, and bilge still to go.
Before beginning, I removed several remaining through hull fittings, including the galley sink/icebox drain far aft in the so-called "wet locker" beneath the companionway; an unused fitting in the engine room; and the engine intake and knotmeter transducer on the turn of the bilge just above the keel. In all cases I simply cut the fittings from inside and removed the remains. The engine intake featured an integral external strainer, which I removed from outside without problem.
Beginning beneath the companionway, in the "wet locker", I sanded the accessible, exposed surfaces, removing paint and filth. The cables controlling the centerboard, which ran through this locker to a double turning block at the aft end, were in the way, but loose enough that I could work around them for now.
I finished up sanding in the quarterberth area, with the liner's molded shelf and sections above, as well as the underside of the deck (cockpit), which, as in other areas, was covered with a thick, hard, textured surface that looked pretty awful, but wouldn't be easy to smooth.
With finer sandpaper, I sanded the fronts of the molded galley and companionway cabinets, and the quarterberth foot well, which featured an original gelcoat surface. There were areas I'd have to get to later during the next prep stage with different tools and goals. The back upper panel of the galley, surrounding the icebox beneath the cockpit, appeared to have a melamine or laminate surface, and for the moment its disposition was not yet determined.
After documenting the various connections of the centerboard cable and mechanism, I systematically removed the components. At the forward end, there was a heavily rusted pipe that I originally thought was part of the mechanism, but soon determined was unrelated; the pipe was tied to the forward cable anchor point with some small stuff. Documentation available online was helpful in describing how the mechanism worked, but on this boat I noted there was no spring at the forward end of the cable/pulley assembly.
Without undue difficulty, I removed the cable attachment points and unstrung the cable itself, and removed the winch from the cockpit well. I'd save all these components for future reuse and/or reference for new materials (especially the cable) later. I left the cable anchor point and various leads/turning blocks in place. Afterwards, I did some initial cleaning and sanding in the bilge areas and engine room.
Next, I turned to one of the most foul parts of the project: cleaning out the bilge sump on the starboard side of the keel, where the centerboard control arm disappeared into a murk of water (with several inches of bilge beneath the existing drain plug, there'd always been water here) mixed with oil, grease, filth, and, by my own doing, piles of sanding dust; I'd hoped the sanding debris might absorb the water and make cleaning this out easier.
I suppose that was true, but it was still a disgusting process. To begin, I cleaned out what I could by hand, then used a sponge to soak up a few inches of water that floated on top of the coagulated material at the bottom. Complicating the process was a small electric bilge pump that fought its removal tenaciously; space was tight, and the short length of hose attached (I'd earlier cut off the excess hose) was stiffened and brittle with age, making it a real challenge to twist the whole arrangement out of the space. It would have been easier, I guess, if I'd waited till I had removed the centerboard control arm, but I was there now and wanted to clean out the gook. Eventually I got the pump out, and cleaned out the heavily oiled detritus that was several inches deep beneath the centerboard axle.
The centerboard mechanism was, in theory, fairly well engineered to allow for access for maintenance. According to online documentation, there was a bronze access port in the appropriate location on the keel, covered with relatively thin fiberglass to ensure its watertight integrity. Indeed, I'd uncovered the area during bottom stripping some time ago, and it was straightforward to sand away the fiberglass covering the the bronze port.
Of course in practice, opening the access port proved to be impossible on this boat. Because of how the plate revealed itself during sanding, at first I thought I had to remove four screws, which would pop out the plate (one of the screws was corroded away, and another I tried wouldn't back out, though it spun freely in its hole), but shortly I realized there was a center screw-in section designed to open with a standard two-prong tool like those used for deck fill plates.
The first thing I noticed was that the holes in the plate went all the way through, apparently corroded away from within by decades of toxic neglect. With some effort, I could get the plate to spin, but it never unthreaded, and after a time I simply removed the whole fitting by drilling out the four (well, three) screws to release it, as clearly it would need replacing anyway.
This gave me access to a bolt that secured the control arm in place on the axle, which I easily removed. While I was in the area, I also removed the bilge drain plug fitting, which I'd replace as a matter of course, and probably would also try to relocate in a better position lower in the sump for more effective draining.
Finally, I could remove the control arm up in the boat; it was sloppy on the axle. Afterwards, with better access, I tried a little solvent to begin to loosen the caked-on greasy deposits from the sump with marginal success, and left the remaining bilge work for tomorrow.
Total Time on This Job Today: 7.25 hours
