Lackey Sailing | August West 4

March 12, 2020

August West 4

Thursday

The sea hood required some light sanding, and then touchup with quick-drying filler to finalize the shape and contours of the after reinforcement. Now the hood was ready for primer and paint.

I spent most of the day working on the teak project, starting with the handrails on the cabin top. After paring away the excess bungs, I stripped and sanded these rails clean, to 120 grit. At the same time, I removed the excess bungs from the companionway trim and sliding hatch.

Next, I stripped and cleaned up as well as possible the teak trim at the aft end of the cockpit, around the rudderpost and forward of the outboard well; Cape Dory did not choose the best wood for these pieces, which I suppose is fair enough, and they’d soon weather to a fine gray color in any event. The clamping bracket for the outboard had once been finished as well, but as this was simply a short length of 2×6, I didn’t make any great attempts to sand it fully bright.

The owner and I had discussed the possibility of installing a vinyl “eyebrow” on the cabin trunk. We’d seen some anecdotal photographic evidence of another Typhoon Sr. with a too-short and not-that-well-done eyebrow that looked unfinished, but still gave a hint of how a real eyebrow might enhance the boat’s appearance. I had the thought of using vinyl tape to create the accent without having to go through the rigorous routine of trying to bend wood around the forward curvature, which was substantial on this boat, so with the owner due to be at the shop the next day for a meeting about the dodger, I took a few minutes to attempt a mockup using 1/2″ masking tape to test the concept.

While the first attempt needed some fine-tuning, particularly around the forward part of the trunk, and wasn’t necessarily quite right yet, it started to give a sense of things. With he upcoming meeting, I didn’t want to spend more time on it till we’d had a chance to decide whether it was worth pursuing.

During the afternoon, I worked to strip the old finish from the insides of the cockpit coamings on both sides. This was surprisingly slow going, but in fact because there was so little finish actually on the wood, it took longer to scrape it away; heavier layers of coatings seem easier to heat and remove. IN any event, by the end of the day I’d stripped all the finish from the inside faces of the coamings, leaving them ready for sanding to complete the work later.