With the rest of the brightwork stripped and sanded, I turned to a few loose parts I’d removed: the pedestal table and companionway swashboards. These also required stripping and sanding so they could be refinished.
After removing hardware, I stripped and sanded the wood clean.
Now that I’d removed all the old finish by scraping, it was time to finish cleaning up and preparing the wood with sanding. Starting at the starboard bow, and the anchor platform, I worked throughout the say to sand all the teak with 80-120 grit paper, working my way down the toerail/rubrail, as well as the eyebrow trim and outboard side of the coamings. I used a small palm sander where I could, and by hand as needed for tight areas, curves, and in particular the long lengths of headsail tracks along the aft quarter of the toerail, where the overhanging track prohibited access by anything other than hand sanding.
I continued around the taffrail, and up the port side from there, making it about halfway up the port side (to the forward end of the headsail track) by the end of the day. I might have finished the port side (and had intended to), but lost an hour earlier in the day trying to fix (and succeeding thanks to hosting support chat) yesterday’s website upload problem (apparently I’d used up my disk space on my VPN, which was a surprise since I thought it was unlimited ( and was why I switched to a VPN some years ago)) since I couldn’t get hold of my web guru (who was supposed to be available for these behind-the-scenes things that I clearly don’t understand). I’ll be looking for a new web guru from here. (And now I’m done with the parentheticals.)
Now that the epoxy had cured overnight, I removed the rest of the masking from the rowlock risers.
Next, I turned to the rudder case. Before disassembling the dry-fitted parts, I noted the reason why it was unimportant that the fiberglass sheathing on the insides of the side panels didn’t have to extend to the tips: the area was completely contained within the area covered by the internal plywood spacer.
I disassembled the clamped-up parts and pulled the alignment nails, leaving their tips just poking out through the plywood to aid in aligning the center spacer. Then, I applied epoxy gluing mix to the spacer and installed it on one of the cheeks (facing up on the bench), then applied glue to the other side and installed the second panel, tapping in all the alignment nails, ensuring the parts were visually and by touch, and then clamped the pieces securely.
I didn’t overdo it with the epoxy, using enough without too much of a surfeit, and now I cleaned up the narrow interior of the assembly with a dry brush to remove the minimal epoxy that had squeezed out on the inside; the way the assembly worked, the interior had to remain clean and clear for the rudder to fit and operate properly. I checked carefully with a strong light shone into the space to ensure it was clear. At the top of the case, where the tiller would eventually go, I smoothed the excess squeeze out into a small fillet on each side.
I left the rudder case securely clamped to cure overnight or longer.
Picking up where I left off last time, I continued sanding the teak on deck, finishing up the port toerails, eyebrow, and anchor platform. Generally, the wood cleaned up nicely with the two rounds of sanding, with few indelible stains, and the wood grain had fortunately been protected for long enough that even the weathered areas remained smooth and easy to sand clean and flat.
From there, I climbed on deck to sand the remaining teak: handrails, cockpit coamings, companionway, and assorted bits. This completed the sanding phase, other than a few pieces I’d removed from the boat that still required stripping and sanding (namely the swashboards and pedestal table).
To begin, I finished removing the masking tape from the new foot cleats.
Next, I worked on the layout and preparation to install the rowlock risers. These were centered 2″ and 22″ on each side aft of the bulkhead in the after hull section, and at these points I installed two layers of masking tape to cover the gunwales, and marked at the appropriate measurement using a straight ruler as shown in the book. Then, I marked a line in 13/16″ from the gunwale edge to center the risers longitudinally.
I masked off the risers, and, with each one in turn clamped in place properly aligned with its two centering marks, used a knife to cut the gunwale masking tape along the outline of the riser.
I epoxied the risers in place with the usual thickened mixture–no clamps required. I carefully cleaned up the squeezeout from around each riser and let them be to partially cure.
Several hours later, the risers had cured enough that I could remove the tape from the gunwales, but I wouldn’t remove the tape from the risers themselves till the epoxy had fully cured overnight.
I dry-assembled the rudder case parts so I could drive alignment nails (for use during final glue-up) and check the fit of the now-completed rudder in the assembly. First, I clamped the two plywood halves together and drilled the 1/4″ through-holes at the two locations (one for mounting the rudder, the other for the tiller). Then I inserted the rudder in the space–it fit with only a slight friction, which I felt was correct–and, with a drill bit inserted through the hinge pin hole, checked its general orientation and operation, all of which seemed good. The tiller as is fit nicely in the upper section of the rudder case, which meant that now I could go ahead and varnish the tiller to complete it.
I was tempted after the dry fit to go ahead and glue up the three parts of the rudder case, but it promised to be a fairly fussy process and, as I’d used up my self-allotted time for the day, I didn’t want to feel rushed through the process (there’d be a bit of fiddly glue cleanup inside the case itself), so I left the final assembly for next time.
While there were still small jobs to do, I allowed myself an hour or two first thing in the morning to accomplish what I could before shifting focus to my other ongoing project. To begin, I flipped the foils over and applied a gloss coat of epoxy to the second side, same as the first.
Next, I worked on the rowing foot braces. The kit came with a paper template to locate the braces, which I used quickly to locate four large patches of masking tape on each side, then replaced the template so I could accurately mark the locations with little marks at the four corners of each slot. I repeated this process on both sides of the boat. I held each of the eight braces in place and cut around the base with a knife, so that I could remove the tape from the footprint. I labeled each foot brace and location accordingly.
I masked each brace completely for protection, then installed them in a thickened epoxy mixture, cleaning up the excess glue but leaving all the tape in place for the moment.
After a few hours, I carefully removed the tape from the hull, but left the tape in place on the braces themselves as I didn’t want to jar the still-curing epoxy. I left the braces to cure overnight, and would remove the remaining tape in the morning.
I continued work with the heat gun and scraper, and over the course of the day finished up the port coaming, port toerail, handrail, and eyebrow. Now all the brightwork was ready for some thorough sanding, which would be the focus of the next few days.
Now that both sides of the foils were fill coated and cured, I could trim the excess fiberglass from the second side, and finalize the sanding and shaping of both pieces. I sanded the glossy epoxy flat and smooth with a sanding block and finessed the edges by hand (especially the leading edge) to achieve the final shape.
Before continuing, I checked the daggerboard to ensure it fit in the slot. There was as yet nothing to hold it in place, so I had to hold it while doing the check, but the board fit through both ends of the slot with no issued whatever.
Now, I applied a final gloss coat of epoxy to the first side; I’d do the second side on a different day.
I lightly sanded the outboard mounting area to smooth the epoxy fill coat and complete the construction work there.
The first step to refurbish the brightwork was to strip what remained of the old. Many areas of the wood were already bare and weathered, thanks to complete coating failure, but other, more protected areas still had many layers of varnish. Starting at the starboard bow with the anchor platform, I spent the day working with a heat gun and scraper to remove the remains of varnish from the starboard toerail/rubrail, the starboard eyebrow, starboard cockpit coaming, aft coaming, and the cabintop handrails, Dorade vent, and other small pieces of brightwork on the cabin trunk, leaving the port coaming and toerail to finish up next time.
The wood still looked terrible at this point, but sanding would clean up the dark and weathered areas, and the remnants of varnish and scraping.
The rudder and daggerboard required some preparation before I could install the fiberglass on the second side. To begin, I used a knife trimmed the excess cloth from the first side.
The leading edge required some sanding and shaping to finalize the profile and bevel and slightly round the epoxy bead I’d installed from the first side. This wasn’t difficult and didn’t take long, but one could see how it might easily be done incorrectly, as the job required a certain sense of what the shape should be and how to create it. I masked the plywood to help gauge where the sanding was occurring, and used a small sanding block to bevel and shape the epoxy leading edge, sweetening it by hand thereafter. Around the remainder of both foils, I lightly sanded flush the remnants after I’d cut away the excess cloth, and sanded the top edge of the cloth where it wrapped onto the plywood edges at the 18mm thick top sections of each foil.
I sheathed the second side of the foils the same way as the first, with one layer of 4 oz. cloth and, on the daggerboard, a second layer at the top, which extended an inch or two down onto the hydrofoil. The cloth wrapped over the edges of the full-thickness portion of each foil, extending well past the seam from the first side. As before, I let the excess cloth on the leading edge side drape well past the curve to help the fiberglass cling to the newly-shaped area as required.
In other works, I trimmed and lightly sanded the sheathing I’d installed over the outboard modification at the transom, and then fill-coated the area to fill the weave of the cloth, essentially finishing up the work on this area.
The bulk of the small parts now had enough varnish for installation, but the top, visible side of the aft seat still required a few sprayed coats, which I finished up during the day.
Later in the day, when the fiberglass on the foils had had about 5 hours’ cure time, I returned to apply the epoxy fill coat to both parts, rolling on a thick coat of epoxy to fill the weave of the cloth and prepare the second side for eventual sanding and final fairing.
