Lackey Sailing | Further 24

January 16, 2023

Further 24

Monday

The first order of business was to remove the weights and plastic, then wash and lightly sand the newly-cored areas to prepare them for the next steps. Along with basic smoothing and scuffing, I spent some time to round over the coaming edge outboard of the cockpit to later accept new laminate wrapping over from the deck onto the inside coamings.

After cleaning up, I pressed on with the sidedeck and foredeck patches, leaving the areas outboard of the cockpit for later attention. Before I could laminate the new top skin, I had to take care of the chainplate slots in a couple areas, as I’d left the core out from around the slots and now needed to fill the areas with an epoxy mixture. I prepared and installed plastic chainplate analogs to keep the slots intact during the epoxy work.

Afterwards, I lightly skim-coated the core on the sidedecks, which had the effect of wetting it out before the fiberglass, and filling any small voids here and there leftover from installing the core.

While that cured slightly, I cut the first layer of fiberglass for the patches, using the core patterns I’d made earlier as the first layer would sit directly over the core without overlapping in order to bring the core and environs up flush with the adjacent decks as needed. Then, I wet out and installed this first layer.

Once that was done, I continued cutting two more layers of fiberglass for the sidedeck repairs, using the paper patterns I’d made last time. As needed, I prepared staggered joints between the layers so no joint ended up above another. Then, I wet out and installed the two additional layers in epoxy resin; at the ends of the jib track repairs, forward of the cockpit, I held the new material back as needed so the eventual laminate outboard of the cockpit could overlap as needed. I hadn’t yet made a pattern for the foredeck repair, other than the first layer, so even though it was ready for the next two layers I waited that for next time.