Lackey Sailing | Arietta Phase 2-11

November 16, 2021

Arietta Phase 2-11

Tuesday

With a marker, I went around the deck and highlighted all the small deck cracks I wanted to grind out and repair. Most of these were small enough that they were hard to see, particularly once the gelcoat dust started flying, so by tracing them I hoped to make it easier to keep track. While the sheer number of these cracks seemed overwhelming, they were mostly of a tight and minor nature in the heavy layers of gelcoat atop the deck, but for cosmetics if nothing else they required repair.

I’d planned to get right into grinding these out, but I was called away unexpectedly when my dentist appointment was moved up several weeks thanks to a cancellation, so to use up the time before the appointment, I chose instead to work on the bow pulpit.

When Arietta was here last time, the owner had asked if I could straighten a bent bow light bracket on the bow pulpit, but I was unable to do so with the pulpit on the boat–I tried, but the little bracket was amazingly strong, strong enough that I wondered how it ever got bent in the first place without also causing damage to the pulpit itself, and nothing I could try on the boat itself budged it even a little, so we postponed the project till now, when I knew the pulpit would be off the boat and easier to work on or, if needed, to take somewhere.

Some days earlier, I’d prepared for this by removing the bow light assembly to expose the bracket, and tried unsuccessfully then some various clamping positions and pressure to straighten out the bracket.

Now, I eventually straightened it out with a few different positions and machinations in the vice.

Afterwards, I took the opportunity to replace the wiring through the pulpit, then reinstalled the light fixture to complete the project.

Later, back from my appointment, I ground out all the cracks on deck, creating wide-ish bevels around all the cracks and through the gelcoat layers as needed to eliminate the cracks. I also reamed out the screw holes from the old eyebrow trim–the new trim might use different spacing–and created wider, gentle bevels around the new jib track hole locations and at the stanchion base fasteners to prepare for additional filling.