January 20, 2017
Halcyon 16
Friday
I spent the morning working on the decks, first sanding the new fiberglass over the chainplates to bring it flush with the adjacent deck areas, and lightly sanding as needed the fairing compound on the poop deck and few other areas of the deck. I also removed the final fasteners–the heavily rusted ones that had secured the plastic cowl vent rings–from the lazarette hatches, and, after some final hole preparation, sanded these hatches to begin to smooth the nonskid pattern.
Afterwards, I applied fairing compound to the various deck repairs as needed. The poop deck repairs were more or less at their final contours, but there were some low spots left after the first round. For the lazarette hatches, I filled all the old fastener holes, and skim-coated the surfaces to fill the remaining nonskid pattern and prepare these hatches for future steps.
During the past week or so, I’d been continually soaking in penetrating oil the three broken studs in the starboard deadlight frame, and now, with locking pliers, I gingerly removed the studs successfully, breathing a sigh of relief when it was done.
Total time billed on this job today: 5 hours
0600 Weather Observation:
28°, cloudy. Forecast for the day: Mostly sunny, 39°