Continuing the process, in a brief work session I lightly sanded the primer on the pedestal with 220 grit, then applied the first coat of new white enamel.
Continuing the process, in a brief work session I lightly sanded the primer on the pedestal with 220 grit, then applied the first coat of new white enamel.
Now that I’d determined the apparent source of the deck leak–the forward deadlight on the starboard side–I moved on with the repair, starting with the exterior deadlight trim. I’d first started taking trim off from the inside, hoping to avoid disturbing the well varnished-in trim on the outside, but the nature of the deadlight’s assembly was such that removal of the trim and glass from outside was required.
The good news was that the owner had removed and reinstalled all these pieces and parts during his restoration, but even that was now many years past and, as with most things, not knowing exactly what I’d find as I dug into it was the hardest part.
The teak trim over the glass deadlight was bunged in place, presumably with screws beneath the bungs. So I started by carefully drilling out one of the bungs, eventually revealing the screw beneath. It took a while to determine what sort of screw it was–a slotted bronze head–so I could finally clean out the slot and remove the screw. I was surprised to find that the fastener was a 3/4″ machine screw, not a wood screw–apparently because the actual structure of the cabin trunk was fiberglass, not wood, beneath the exterior and interior veneer paneling. It was not easy to remove the screw, but an impact gun set on its lowest level helped break it free and spin it out.
The first screw had taken roughly an hour to remove, all told, and with 16 screws remaining around the deadlight, I feared I might never get to the last one. Fortunately, now that I had a better sense of what was what, the remaining three screws on the forward trim piece came out more quickly, and soon I pried off the trim. This revealed the edge of the glass lens near the forward edge of the opening; however, the lens sat well below the surface of the surrounding wood, meaning that a lot of sealant had been required between the trim–which ostensibly pinned and sealed the lens in place–and the lens itself.
Next, I removed the top section of trim, with no particular issues in removal. Here, I found the glass lens was nearly 1/2″ below the opening in the cabin side, a very large gap, and the sealant had many voids and pockets that may have contributed to the leakage seen, even though the seal here was good enough that none of the water from the leak test entered the boat from the window itself–all the leakage was channeled somehow down around the window to where it finally came out above the berth. Given the state of the sealant here, it made more sense.
In this manner I continued with the remaining two trim pieces which, along with some unrelated delays from other business, ate up the rest of the afternoon and, as the process drew out with various difficulties, I wasn’t sure if I’d meet my goal of removing all the trim today. Two of the screws at the bottom aft corner fought removal by normal means, forcing me to drill out their heads so I could remove the trim, and then the long bottom piece of trim turned out to be extremely well-adhered, making its removal a tedious and nail-biting battle between careful prying progress and risking damage to the trim. Eventually I prevailed, but by then it was so late in the day, and the process had been so frustrating and tiring, that I elected to leave the glass lens in place for now, not daring to try and remove it till I was fresh again.
I first came to know the boat that became Miss Helen, and her owner, more than 20 years ago. At the time, I was doing some marine surveys, and was hired to look at this 1967 Frisco Flyer, which had been abandoned in a small boatyard out on Vinalhaven Island, ME. I traveled out to the island with the eventual owner to inspect the boat; the boat was generally sound, but had been neglected for many years, and required a major overhaul. The owner’s family had a property on the island, which is how he came to find the boat.
The owner took the boat, now on a new trailer, back to Wyoming, where he lived, and spent 10 or more years restoring her before enjoying sailing her in Montana for several seasons. But recently be brought the boat back to Vinalhaven to sail in the summers, and this year left her with me to look into a nagging deck leak problem, among some other small maintenance chores.
I began the project as usual by repositioning the boat on her trailer more in the center of the shop (I’d had her pressed to one side for storage during most of the winter) and setting up staging to ease deck access.
The owner reported that the deck leaked directly over the starboard berth–his wife’s berth, as it happened–but he was not sure from whence it came. So my plan was to flood this area with water to recreate the leak, and then take it from there to figure out the cause. The deadlights were an obvious candidate, but the owner wasn’t sure if some of his deck work might have left an opening for leakage as well, and had mentioned his worries about the seam where the decking met the cabin trunk, as well as some other possibilities.
In the cabin, I started by removing a piece of trim at the lower edge of the cabin trunk, removal of which would expose the bottom edge of the wooden veneer and the deck edge. The trim, which had been removed during the owner’s project, was secured now with round-head bronze screws, making removal straightforward.
Next, I set up a hose and flooded the area with a heavy shower spray for some time, which definitely succeeded in creating the leak below. The leak dripped from a consistent point just below the forward edge of the forward deadlight.
The owner also mentioned concerns about the forward hatch, so I also spent some time flooding this area, but could not create a leak around the hatch. That’s a good outcome.
There were two opening ports in the main cabin, and the owner mentioned leakage there as well; indeed, both leaked when flooded, but it turned out the port side had been not dogged down tightly. However, the design of these ports held water in the spigot, against the seal, and the seal installed appeared to have been indelibly compressed by the port frame, causing a minor drip even when the ports were dogged down tightly, as the spigot was angled inwards and could not drain fully. It’s asking a lot of any port seal to stand up to a constant pool of water even under perfect circumstances, but after inspecting the seal I thought I’d try replacing it with something new and see how it performed.
Having now created the leaks, it was time to get more scientific about figuring out where the leak came from. First, I wanted to eliminate the deck itself as a candidate, if possible, so I set up my hose to flood only the deck itself, not the deadlights, to see if the leak continued. Happily, there was no interior leak with this setup, which meant the unsavory task of trying to repair the decks or cabin trunk seam would not be necessary.
Since the position of the leak inside was consistent, and there didn’t seem to be multiple leaks, it seemed that the forward deadlight was the culprit. Not sure how these were assembled or sealed, and with the exterior trim bunged and heavily varnished into place, I chose to start carefully with the interior trim to see if its removal would allow the deadlight to be disassembled. But after removing the after L-shaped vertical piece of trim with some difficulty, it was immediately clear that the lens of the deadlight was actually secured against the interior trim, as I could see the exposed edge of the glass lens inside the newly-exposed opening (the point of the putty knife is directly on the edge of the glass). So it looked like I’d have to remove the exterior trim in order to free the lens and work towards rebedding the entire deadlight–including the interior trim/frame, but the remaining three pieces would have to await removal of the outer trim and lens.
I sanded the coat of metal primer to prepare the surface and, after cleaning up, applied a coat of white primer over the entire pedestal.
In other works, I replaced the faceplate on the old engine panel in the cockpit. The panel’s main problems were cosmetic, as the old face had begun to fail and chip away in places, and while the owner indicated there were a couple operational quirks and he’d be open to replacing the whole panel, I could not find a replacement panel of this style anywhere, other than one similarly-worn used one. However, the damaged face plate issue must be a common one, as there was a vigorous market in replacement face panels online. So I ordered one of those and now, with the replacement in hand, I removed the rest of the old one and replaced the face. It did improve the appearance for a minimal cost.
The first order of business on the pedestal was to remove a huge Velcro pad, to which had been secured a winch handle pocket. This Velcro was well-stuck to the side of the pedestal with its integral adhesive, and removal was challenging; then, it left behind a mass of gummy adhesive that I could only remove by scraping, taking some of the pedestal coating with it. Once that was off and scraped clean, I thoroughly sanded the pedestal as needed, feathering out areas where the paint had flaked clean through to the aluminum beneath so that the final result would have an acceptably smooth appearance.
Ideally, it would have been nice to strip the pedestal fully down to raw aluminum and recoat with a series of appropriate etching metal primers and so forth, but that was impracticable with the pedestal mounted in the boat, and doing the job right would be uneconomical. So as before, when I refinished the pedestal in 2016, I settled for “good enough”. With all the old coating now gone from the pedestal base–the worst part of the pedestal then and now–I hoped that the new paint would adhere better and last longer, though the pedestal would require occasional recoating for best appearance going forward. If this were to be a once every 10 years sort of thing, that seemed reasonable enough.
To that end, I found some metal primer in my inventory left over from some other job long forgotten, and since it was what I had, I decided to use it on the bare metal parts as a good base before priming the entire thing anew. I planned to let the metal primer cure over the weekend, and then over a few additional days I could apply regular primer and two or three coats of new white paint.
To help space the cove stripe properly from the rubrail, I installed two widths of 1-1/2″ tape periodically beneath the rail, to simulate the 3″ distance required. I’d measured the original cove stripe earlier in the project to determine this height. At the ends, I installed longer lengths of tape so I could use them to make some marks for where to end the cove stripe.
I used the tape only as a general alignment guideline as I installed the vinyl covestripe tape along the hull on each side, fairing the line by eye. At the owner’s request, I chose a blue color to coordinate with the boottop. I terminated the line 12″ forward of the transom, and about 3′ aft of the stem (2.5′ aft of the forward edge of the rubrail), as I think it looks best if the cove stripe does not run too close to either end of the boat. This small accent added greatly to the appearance of the boat and finished things off.
Now done with the staging, I gratefully broke it down and stored it away, opening space around the boat. Next, I installed the new lettering on the transom to complete the hull work. The style, placement, and size of the lettering was the same that the owner had chosen originally in 2016, but with a different color scheme: blue lettering with a narrow black outline, tying everything together.
Up on deck, I assessed a couple of the last-remaining jobs to be completed, mainly the steering pedestal. I’d repainted the pedestal 10 years earlier and now it required it again, as there had been complete failure of the remmants of the original factory coating at the pedestal base (including the repaint), and more minor and expected failures elsewhere. I’d already scraped off all the failing paint on the base collar during an earlier stage of the project, but the remainder of the pedestal would require additional prep work. This would be my focus next time.
Now that the hull paint had had a few days’ cure time, I was ready to move forward, and the next step was to reassemble the hulls for the first time since paint. With a short day on tap, it seemed a good time for this job.
I started by reinstalling the four connecting pins, this time with a bit of waterproof grease on the shaft where it passed through the aft bulkhead, and also in the threads of the forward bulkhead. Once all the pins were reinstalled, I carefully connected the hull–the last time this would be done before the alignment clips were installed, and which would help with future connections. I did this on the bench, but then moved the boat onto a pair of sawhorses positioned as indicated in the book, and once there, I released and resecured all the pins to ensure there was no binding.
I’d done the early layout and installation steps for the alignment clip before the boat was painted, and now, to install them for real, I started by installing a second pair of wooden spacers–with sticky tape on one side–to the clips, which would hold them just slightly off, and the proper distance from, the bulkhead. Then, I drilled for and installed the mounting screws, just a dry-fit for now.
It’s funny how you notice things sometimes that blew by you the day before. As I reviewed these photos, I noticed that I’d installed the alignment clips backwards, or on the wrong sides, something that I obviously didn’t notice during installation. The angled side of the clip should face the sides of the boat, as this angle helps bring the forward half of the boat in and then lock it down in the single and proper location for securing. But it was the first thing I noticed now, so I’d have to switch them around. This posed no problem as the top parts of the clips were symmetrical, and I’d yet to finish off the installation with epoxy in the screw holes.
I lightly sanded the hull with a small block sander and 320 grit, and by hand on the chines and in the corners, to prepare the surface for the third coat of hull paint. Afterwards, I vacuumed and solvent-washed the hulls.
Later in the day, after a final tack-off, I applied the third coat of the gloss polyurethane paint.
It was a day of minor miscellany. With just a couple smaller jobs left on the docket for this project, I wanted first to wrap up the work already underway, so I reinstalled the now well-cured midships hatch frame with its fancy new lens.
I reassembled the hardware I’d removed from the companionway swashboards and cockpit table.
I’d hoped, and frankly planned, to finish up the hull with the cove stripe, but alas, the order I’d been awaiting didn’t arrive despite promises from the postal service in my inbox all weekend. So I didn’t get anywhere with this small but important step, but did manage time late in the day to go out and pick up the new graphics for the transom, so that was something.